The Tragic Seduction of Ty Lee
by The Turn
Summary: Azula returns, a fascinating creature of beauty and power, her intentions hard to fathom. The Gaang sees only an enemy, while a crippled Ty Lee sees her only chance for Happily Ever After. (Part 2 of the Fire Lord Trilogy)
1. Chapter 1

**Prologue**

**The arrow shot by the archer may or may not kill a single person. But stratagems devised by a wise person can kill even babies in the womb. **

**–Kautilya, Indian Philosopher**

She was a goddess, and she was good at it.

She went hither and non over the earth, walked up and down and through it, and wherever she went there was good fortune, the sprouting of harvests, the blooming of flowers. Wherever she spread her hand, the winter didn't seem so cold, nor the summers so dry. The only wildfires that lasted longer than a day were the wildfires of her rumors—rumors that were swiftly becoming the foundation of legend.

It was said she was made up of the moon, so pearlescent and smooth was her skin, so white her hair. Some told stories that she was a ghost. Perhaps she was another Avatar? A new Spirit who broke the old laws and actually helped humans? Or no, it was the Avatar himself, concealed as a woman to stir up come drama, get the people talking.

As is often common with such rumors, all were true, and yet false—and all to the same degree.

The new goddess could not be summoned by any prayer, nor bribed by any sacrifice. The new goddess had neither temple nor religion nor teachings to give anyone, yet she was developing followers. She walked wherever she wished. And no one of any trustworthy repute had ever reported hearing her speak.

But she was far from mute.

It was simply that the only ones whom the goddess spoke to were all, instinctively, deemed untrustworthy: children.

There was a special place in the goddess's heart, apparently, when it came to children. The only prayer that might catch her attention came from the sob of a child—and this, only because the human part of her remembered what it was to cry. Be it from the pain of a recently broken limb, the loneliness from having no one to play with, or the ache of a starving belly, the children would all eventually tell the same things to whoever would listen:

The goddess was the most beautiful lady in the world. She wore no clothes. And she always took away the pain, gave the child a kiss, whispered that she loved them forever, and then disappeared.

Many would dismiss such claims from a son or daughter as the wild, imaginative pranks that children often pull. But there was always one single thing that rendered any negative criticism moot: the children, who had always been sick or hurt, were now perfectly cured. The deaf began to hear. The mute began to speak. And the rumors spread even faster.

This was probably, in the end, the real reason why the goddess was able to kill the Avatar and put an end to his reign.

* * *

Ty Lee shivered beneath her tangled, sweat-soaked sheets, and prayed that she hadn't shit herself again.

A comforting, worried voice met her ears though the dark. "Ty, relax," Teo said softly from close by. His voice was like a warm hand on her shoulder. "You were dreaming. Just a bad dream, that's it."

She caught herself and tried to slow down her heart, then bit her lip until the pain brought her consciousness fully out of the dream. Teo was sitting at the edge of his bed, poised to leap into his own chair, his eyes wide and worried, his aura a blaze of red tinged with green—concern, spiced with a tiny bit of fear.

"Did I—?" she started, then stopped. It was so humiliating, so _wrong_, that she had to ask this. But she couldn't bring herself to look down at the sheets. "Is there a mess again?"

"I don't know. I can't smell anything, though. Do you want me to look?" His voice was gentle, yet cautious. She hated that tone; it made her stomach knot up. Like he was afraid she was so weak that she'd break into a million different pieces.

"You'd…you'd better. Please." Her own tone had loathing and disgust lurking just beneath the calm _I'll be all right_ surface.

The nightmares were getting more and more frequent, as the months went on. Before, the physical strain of adjusting to life in her own chair had been so demanding that her nights had been blissfully absent of anything but exhausted sleep. Now, though, her body had adapted and acclimatized to its new reality, and the days weren't so stressful.

Well. The stress wasn't anything _new_, anyway.

And if there wasn't enough for her to do during the day that could bring her to the brink of exhaustion, that was when the bad dreams came. It was usually on these nights that she woke up in a puddle of her own piss and shit—a puddle that she couldn't feel, and, if she'd been lying in it long enough, couldn't even smell.

This was one of the reasons why Teo no longer slept in her bed.

One of the reasons.

"It's almost sunrise," he said. He used a long-handled stick to draw back the curtains from the window above his bed. The blue-grey light just preceding the twilight hour gave the room barely enough light to see by. Using the same stick, along with a nurselike detachment in his actions, Teo peeled back the sheets on Ty Lee's bed. She forced herself to look.

The sheets were only soaked with the sweat that made her nightclothes cling to her skin.

She gave a sigh of relief that threatened to become a full-blown case of the shakes. The nightmare hadn't been too bad. Maybe she could make it to the bathroom before bad luck caught up with her.

The rehabilitation therapy that she'd been going through, with Teo as her self-appointed live-in nurse, had given her some urinary and sphincter control, along with limited sensation down there. But even those partial gains were overshadowed by the ever-present feeling of _lack_. She couldn't move her legs, couldn't feel them or anything else below her waist. Underneath her navel she was as dead as Fire Lord Ozai.

She couldn't quite make herself meet Teo's eyes. "I, uh…I better go freshen up, anyways."

Teo was already in his own chair—so damn _fast_, that guy—and rolled to her bed with a single push of his arms. While Ty Lee struggled to clear her legs over the side to where her own chair waited patiently, Teo reached her and slid a hand beneath one arm to help. She lowered her head and tried not to grit her teeth. "I can _do_ it," she said.

"Oh, Ty…" he sounded so tired, so inexpressively sad, as though one breath of her name could encompass all of her petty failings, and his never-ending charity. "I wish you'd just let me help," he muttered, and for a moment the knots in her gut eased up, just a little bit.

"You do help, Teo. Every day." She placed her own hand on top of his. "But you have to let me handle what I can handle, okay?"

He nodded, silently, then turned and wheeled himself over to the bed on his side of the room. Before, he might've kissed her on the cheek and tried to get her to smile. Those days were freshly over.

She'd made sure that bridge was burnt to cinders.

It took both hands to lever each dead leg into the straps of the chair, one at a time, until the numb feet were properly in place on the footrests. She sat there for a long time, staring at her hands. Once upon a time, she'd made those fingers into weapons. In years long gone, she had been widely considered as the finest female hand-to-hand combatant of all time. Her sole reminder of those days, the permanently calloused fingertips, were now being overshadowed by the fresh callouses on her palms, courtesy of pushing her chair everywhere.

She'd thought she was strong, back then. Only later did she find out how strong she really was. Teo had found her sobbing on her bed, sitting on the mattress with shit all over her futile hands, splattering it like a child across her dead thighs as she tried to pound some feeling, some _use_ back into them. That was the precise moment that she knew.

She'd never been anywhere close to strong.

The smell…

More than anything else, that's what she feared the most at night. The smell closing down her lungs, stinging her eyes, choking her throat. It was the smell of the where her grandparents had lived, before she'd run away: the chemical reek of people who were irreparably sick, physically useless, mentally incontinent. Old, decrepit, dying. The smell of mental breakdowns, and downward spirals.

It smelled, sometimes, like Grey Rock.

Ty Lee's chair was the first of its kind, a four-wheeled contraption specially designed to her paralysis, and even if the worst should happen she wouldn't make much of a mess: there was a toilet lid under the seat cushion, along with a bedpan for emergencies—but Ty Lee privately thought that if she ever allowed herself to get into the habit of using them, she'd kill herself.

What Teo had tried to explain away as a convenience in the face of embarrassing emergency, she saw it entirely as a threat. If she ever let herself fall that far into the paralysis, if she surrendered to it the way Aang and Suki and Uncle told her, if she _accepted_ the hardship of life instead of fighting a useless battle…then the smell of it would stick to her forever. Clinging to her skin. A noxious cloud that followed wherever she went.

She was afraid that someday, she might even get used to it.

She wheeled across the hardwood floor and entered the small bathroom. The chair's arms folded down, and she was able to swing herself onto the toilet using wall-mounted rails. As she sat down and tried to relax enough for her bowels and bladder to empty themselves, Ty Lee—who had once been the living embodiment of happiness and life—squeezed her eyes shut against the familiar tears of her private humiliation.

_Why can't I wake up? Please, something—whoever might be listening. That's it. That's all I want._

_Please, just let me wake up._

* * *

The new goddess heard the prayer.

She smiled, and chose to ignore it. For now.

Silence enfolded her, wrapped around her body, soaked through her heart. Silence so deep that it was deafening with imaginary echoes of the past. For the girl she had been, this silence could probably have been painful; now it just _was_.

Silence was the fertile ground from which saplings of possibility budded from her intelligent mind. These saplings grew into tall imaginary trees of life-paths; some blossomed, some died, some were reborn again for use in the future. Like a gardener, she sought ways to guide this growth with gentle efficiency.

Like a gardener, she would use the course of nature to her advantage.

_Like this,_ the thought, finding a branch upon which the weight of her finger could curve the entire tree to her desire; _and then this,_ another spot where her lips upon its bark would color the blooms of this new branch; _resulting with this._

And the tree of the future was the plan of her dream.

The people already within her mind clamored for her attention, so she opened the gates of her memories to release and hear them, standing before them as a titan, regarding them as a queen regards peasants. First among them was the fading remnant of what she once had been: Fire Princess Azula.

The liar, the sadist, the lonely child. Azula now implored for speed and immediate action, cringing against the imagined humiliation of letting a single moment keep her from her revenge. For every moment that passed without a battle won, Azula saw it as inching closer towards failure.

To the Fire Princess, the new goddess said: _I am much more than you were. Failure is impossible._

At the girl's side stood a more recent tenant of the goddess's mind: her mother, Ursa—whose existence had been forgotten during the moments of daylight and company, and only resurfaced sparingly when she was alone at night—whispered surrender. She reminded her daughter that life was impossibly random, and it was better to not only survive in safety, but help remained of her family thrive as well. With the power of the new goddess helping her brother, she could truly bless the Fire Nation and perhaps even the world. Such a course of action would have a higher chance of success and happiness than to walk the path of more pain and risk futile sacrifice.

To Ursa, the new goddess said: _Success and happiness are attained only THROUGH pain and sacrifice. I am much more than you were._

Behind the mother and daughter stood the spiritual essences of the children she'd encountered recently. Faceless, nearly shapeless shades, lives too small to remain distinctive even inside her mind. Their voices blended together in an oceanic murmur, begging that she remember them, that she love them, that she care for them.

To the children she said: _Fear not. For I am with you._

She gathered her strength and pushed them back behind the adamantine doors of her mind, and locked them there. One figure alone remained to face her.

Fire Lord Ozai.

Towering in his strength, his body chiseled from marble, his beard long and straight, his hair a cascade down his shoulders, his eyes black onyx.

To her father she said: _I am coming. You will live again._

And the silent god within her mind nodded his head with approval.

Azula swam back up and broke the surface of her consciousness, to regard her home world with fresh eyes. Then, with footsteps that fell with a measured cadence ordinarily reserved for an executioner's death march, she began to walk towards the city of Ba Sing Se.

_Soon now,_ she told the god within. _Soon. _


	2. Chapter 2

Ty Lee pushed her chair down the main travel path of Kyoshi Camp, heading for the training grounds. She passed row after row of green canvas tents, some of them looking militarily perfect, others barely standing, overburdened with sags and poor settings. The next storm that blew through the island would undoubtedly have a high tent-casualty rate, and the rookies that had pitched them would be certain to catch grief from Suki.

Even though she'd been a Kyoshi warrior herself and had watched as their numbers had grown, Ty Lee was always amazed at how _loud_ the island now was. Combat instructors and drill superiors shouted to be heard over the din—and did a fine job of it, too—while squads ran past in training robes, singing while they kept double-time. Work teams dug ditches and blacksmiths swung their hammers by furnace tents, repairing this breastplate or that short sword.

Suki was down at the training grounds with a full regiment of fresh recruits—fifty in total, all young females from various nations, and not a bender among them. The subject of education today must have been Form One Sword Technique; two rows of twenty-five girls faced each other and went through drilled movements that were called out by Suki, who was pacing up and down the lines.

The strokes were slow and hesitant, with incorrect movements aborted mid-motion to follow the instructor. Even as she watched, Ty Lee saw a blade slip out of a recruit's hand and slam pommel-first into the kneecap of the girl beside her. The stricken recruit howled, buckled sideways, and toppled down half a dozen girls in the line.

_Fresh ones,_ she thought. _Suki's going to have a field day. And I'll be fixing half of them up before the moon rises, by the look of things._

Suki offered no leniency and sent those who had lost their balance to run fifteen laps around the island. The recruit who had dropped the sword, however, was immediately sentenced to the harshest of punishments that didn't involve beheading or lashes:

"Pick up the sword. I'm going to make sure you don't drop it again."

Ty Lee decided to head to the medical tent for supplies first, then come back. With any luck she'd make it before the girl lost consciousness from the pain.

* * *

Iroh walked through the marketplace, surrounded by music.

Not that there was any real tune or tempo—this music came from the jangle of coins trading hands, the street vendors with their calls of attention, the children that screamed as they chased each other. It all swirled around the old man in a melody so familiar, so _right_, that he barely had to keep his eyes open as he walked down the street, humming right along with the music.

He had an empty kitbag slung over one shoulder and a pouch of coins inside the interior pocket of his robes. Oftentimes he didn't buy anything during this morning ritual on his way to the Jade Dragon, but the empty sack was just in case. One never knew when a surprise purchase could be made.

Surprises, it turned out, were the order of the day.

Before Iroh knew why, he found his feet stopping of their own accord. The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck began to raise. His eyes scanned this way and that, while his mind puzzled out what his instincts were trying to tell him.

_What's different?_ he thought, while the crowd parted and flowed around him like he was a boulder in the center of a river. He forced himself not to turn his head to stare in all directions like a spooked sheep-deer. _Is it something I'm just imagining? Some new kind of smell?_

He opened his mind wholly to his senses, and let his gaze unfocus. He wasn't imagining anything—retired he may be, but there were some skills that always stayed sharp, and instincts were one of them. Iroh did an about-face to his immediate right, passed between two tables into a back alley, and began walking away from the noise of the marketplace.

That was when things started coming into focus.

Someone was following him. He had played plenty of games like this in the past for the instinct to ever truly leave him, even at his old age. For the moment he didn't need to know many more details than that.

Now off the main streets and away from the constant noise of the markets—beautiful noise, but high in volume nonetheless—he could hear a new sound in the morning, faint but unmistakable. He'd last heard this noise over three decades ago: a quick, sharp pulsing of leathery wings, bobbing like a teacup on a rippled pond.

Nightmare wings. Belonging to nightmare creatures. Definitely more than one.

Echoes from the building-lined streets made the sound come from everywhere, but it wasn't getting louder. His eyes turned skyward, and he scanned the azure blue above for signs of flying beasts.

_Either I'm losing my senses,_ he thought, _or things are about to get very interesting this morning._

"Uncle?"

Iroh tore his eyes away from the sky and turned around. Behind him, at the mouth of the alleyway into which he'd walked, was a curvaceous young woman in green robes. The startling gray eyes peered out through a curtain of long bangs, and though they didn't meet his own, Uncle was certain he could see a glimmer of mild concern in the woman's face. "What's wrong?"

The air was silent.

No more wings.

Iroh looked at the young woman, paused for a second, and smiled. "No, no, Toph. I'm afraid I was hearing things, and stepped out of the market to clear my head."

"Wow." Her bare feet walked unconcernedly over the rough gravel on the street, and she folded her arms when she got to her side. "I don't even need to focus on your heartbeat. Anyone with working ears could tell you're full of it."

He shrugged—a worthless gesture, considering his audience—and asked, "Normally you sleep in after a date night, don't you? What brings you to the market so early?"

"Shopping for Vidia's birthday," she said. She slipped her arm around Iroh's and together they continued walking further into the alleyway. "Can you believe that kid is nine already?"

"Incredible. Have you considered a black stone bracelet? You know how much the child loves the one you wear."

Iroh watched as the meteorite-ore bracelet unmolded itself from the woman's wrist and slithered up her forearm like a trickle of flowing water, reforming itself around Toph's throat like a choker necklace. "She can fine her _own_ space rock."

Iroh nodded and hummed to himself. "Thank you for the reminder, though. I will have to think about finding a proper gift for her as well."

"Is that before or after we take care of the four guys that are following us?" she asked, a hint of mischief in her voice. "I mean, they seem to want our attention pretty badly."

The old man sighed, and turned his head back over his shoulder.

Four men with weapons faced the duo. Iroh could see the anticipated thrill in their body language: young men that expected a successful hunt. But their tactics also showed training, and discipline. Two hung back at the far mouth of the alley to provide cover with, of all things, crossbows. The other two advanced smoothly with their own crossbows leveled, going for a point-blank range. They were uniformly dressed in black and green leathers—mostly fireproof, Iroh noted, impossible to stain with incriminating blood—and wore helmets and face masks that effectively concealed their identities and nationalities.

The four small barrels of water strapped to their backs, though, was a bit of a giveaway.

Iroh looked at Toph, who turned her face back towards him. He read unconcerned curiosity in her face, like this was all some kind of practical joke being played on them both, and her mouth was beginning to form her next smart remark when the two men in front decided to fire.

Iroh heard the dual _twang-twang_ of bowstrings being loosed, and he reflexively pushed the girl one way and himself in the opposite direction. He hit the dirt, rolled, felt a crossbow bolt clip his leg, but he still managed to land in a crouch behind an enormous pile of alley-trash. Toph was squatting inside the back doorway of a shop, rubbing one skinned elbow and looking mighty pissed.

"I think you'd better deal with them," she muttered loudly. "Because I'll bury them alive if I get carried away again."

"Nonsense, my dear. Since when do you get carried away?"

"Remember the return of Combustion Man?"

"Ah." They were still finding parts of him around the Upper Circle.

Iroh looked at the metal bolt that had grazed his shin and would up lying in the dirt. It wasn't tipped with an arrowhead, but a blunt knob. _Professionals,_ he thought_. So they're well armed, but want us alive._

This was shaping up to be quite the morning.

"General!"

A man's voice. One of the shooters, presumably the leader, as leaders always spoke first.

"Let's do this the easy way, huh? Nobody has to get hurt."

"If only that were true," he muttered.

"We got all kinds of stuff out here, General, not just bolts. We got plenty of water for whatever heat you throw our way. We got stun grenades. We got sleep smoke. We even have a nice net to throw over you. 'Course, it's coated in barnacles so you don't do much thrashing, but we don't need to use it. Just come on out."

While the man talked, Iroh could hear the simultaneous sounds of four water barrels being uncorked and emptied, but not a drop of water made a splash onto the dirt street. They were ditching the weapons and switching to elements.

Mercenaries, he decided, maybe bounty hunters. Stun grenades were expensive, and he didn't even know how much sleep smoke cost these days. A crossbow bolt was cheap iron, but those all added up eventually, and water was free. So they wanted to save a few coins.

They were also giving a retired Firebending general a few seconds to think things over.

This, for a Firebender, was an exceptionally dangerous thing.

And The Dragon of the West was an exceptionally dangerous Firebender.

"You wanna know what else we got?" Iroh could hear the smile in the man's voice. "Take a look skywards."

Over the roof rims above, a pair of red reptilian monster-snouts peered downwards at the scene like two sparrow-hawks watching a cowering kangaroo rat. The two drakes above Iroh—who couldn't believe that any sane human being had actually survived long enough to _train_ the beasts—bared their soot-coated teeth in a mockery of a grin. Iroh began to wonder if these four men _really_ wanted him alive.

_Then again,_ he thought_, if they wanted me dead, they would have already given the signal to fire. _

He was shortly given a display that made him wonder if the drakes could read minds: a blast from one drake shattered a chest-sized fireball into the brick wall five feet above him. Chunks of hot brick and liquid flame fell down onto him, slashing through his robes, battering him to the ground.

"Uncle!" Toph's eyes had gone from annoyed to serious to outright alarmed. "I'm about five seconds away from taking care of them myself—"

"Just wait. Patience, Toph."

"You've got a plan?"

"Of course. And it's really quite brilliant." He reached up and spread his hands above the garbage heap so that everyone could see. "All right, I surrender! Don't shoot! I'm coming out!"

The drakes chirruped and hissed, as though disappointed when he worked his way from cover, hands still held high.

"You're pretty good," he said, stepping away from the hiding places and towards the mercenaries, putting distance between himself and Toph. "Among the best I've ever seen."

"Right," one answered. From his voice, this was the leader. He still had his crossbow aimed directly at the old man's heart, but the armor of his body was coated with a thick gelatinous layer of water, bent into place. His three comrades were identically coated.

Protecting themselves from the Dragon, rather than the drakes.

One of them pulled out two pairs of manacles and tossed them at Iroh's feet. The leader said, "Put these on. Wrists and ankles."

"You certainly know how to come prepared."

"Yep. Nice and slow, now."

Slowly—_very_ slowly—Iroh bent down to the ground, wincing in the arthritic way all old men do. "I wish I could tell you how many times I've seen teams like yours come after me. Especially during my younger days. Plenty of Earthbenders wanted the prize money for my capture."

"And now you're caught."

His hands fumbled with untangling the chains of the two bonds. "There were bounty hunters. An assassin or two." He might have been reminiscing with old friends as he complied. "Once there were even some pirates. Armed with everything from elements to animals, just like you four. But like all the others, you've forgotten the only thing that would actually do you any good."

The leader kept one hand aiming the crossbow, while the other instinctively reached into the water armor, down into an equipment pouch, and pulled out a long, unlit grenade. "What's that?"

Iroh's eyes went cold, and his voice went colder. "A healer."

He stood up quickly, much too quickly for an arthritic old man, and pulled his outstretched arms inward like he was drawing in air. Steam, searing heat, washed out and away from the surface of the watery armor coating each mercenary and was drawn towards Iroh.

The leader found himself completely unable to move. He looked down at his body and saw that his own water had become solid, inescapable ice. "W-what?" he said, his head locked into place but his eyes fully able to see the old man in front of him. "You're a Firebender! How did you _do_ this?"

Iroh, a thin ribbon of flame swirling around him like a playful hula-hoop, said, "Firebending is all about arranging heat, after all. I just took the heat out of your water."

Above his head, Iroh could hear the drakes chirruping to each other as they watched their handlers be incapacitated, deciding whether or not to strike. He only had enough time to say one thing.

"Toph?"

"Way ahead of you."

Stepping out from the doorway, she tilted her head upwards in the general direction of her enemy. Both fists were placed on her hips as though she'd decided, in the spirit of a fair fight, they would be allowed a free shot. "All right, then." She sounded cheerful, and she raised her left wrist upwards as if to show off her jewelry to her opponents.

Iroh was reminded of the old maxim that, if one loves their job, they need never work a day of their lives.

The black stone bracelet around Toph's wrist abruptly melted into liquid form. Tendrils of solid black ink slithered over her arm, beneath her sleeves, around her torso, climbing her body like vines on a brick wall, curving around her neck and moving up to even encase her skull. Ridges began to form around joints, while other sections of the liquid ore solidified into ebony stone.

And so by the time the two firedrakes had decided to unleash a torrent of flame so hot that it turned the entire alleyway into a broiling furnace, Toph Bei Fong was covered head to toe in solid black, gleaming, unbreakable armor that was thinner than a sheet of parchment.

When the drakes ran out of breath and the fire died down, the only thing that was burning were the last remnants of her clothes.

"Sorry, boys, but this has got to be the dumbest thing you've ever done in your whole lives."

And Toph Bei Fong went on the attack.

"Now," Iroh turned back to his four attackers. "Where were we?"

* * *

Suki aimed a downward stroke towards the girl's head. The new recruit didn't get her own sword up in time, and Suki's wooden blade hit the forearm at an appallingly right angle. There was a snapping sound, enough time for the Kyoshi warrior to think _And there go the wrist bones_, and the recruit keeled over to one side as the pain sent her back down to one knee.

"Come on!" Suki spat. "You dropped your guard. You dropped your damn guard again, recruit!"

"You broke my arm!" the girl snarled back.

Good. Anger was better than tears.

Suki looked to the side of the field—Ty Lee was just in time, already rolling her way over the grass, medical bag placed on her lap. Suki raised one hand to halt the medic before she made it any closer, and continued to lecture. "If you get hurt on this field, it's a result of your own failure," she said in a voice chiseled from stone. "Do you think your enemy will politely allow you to get up and leave the battleground because you sustained a minor injury like a broken arm? Do you think raiders will ignore weaknesses in your defense out of courtesy for your feelings? Do you think an enemy will listen while you explain to him that swords just aren't your thing, and he should go easy on you?"

She picked up the girl's fallen practice sword. It was old wood, scarred and pitted with dings from a thousand strikes. Suki had delivered most of them. She tossed the wooden sword onto the grass by the recruit's knees. "Lose one hand. Fight with the other."

The recruit, whose name Suki didn't know and didn't care to find out, looked at the woman like she'd suggested an Airbending demonstration.

"You're treating this like a self-defense class, recruit, when in reality that's exactly wrong. You learn these techniques in order to protect the other members of your squad. You protect your sisters, no matter what happens. If you break your arm, if you're run through, if you've lost a limb. It doesn't matter. Your sword stays up, and you keep fighting."

"Even if I'm bleeding to death?" the girl demanded. But she tucked her injured arm close to her body and wrapped the fingers of her left hand around the sword.

"Even if you're bleeding to death. You have to trust the warrior beside you to protect you if you black out. Just as you protect her. It's the ultimate discipline, recruit, and it's literally life and death. Not just yours. If you fail, it won't be only you who dies. You'll be responsible for the deaths of those relying on you."

The girl leaned on the blade to stand up. The healthy pink of her face was now turning a nauseated shade of gray-green. Her words were hissed through clenched teeth, "This really hurts like hell, ma'am."

"Respect your weapon," Suki replied, and knocked the blade out from under the girl, sending her sprawling onto the ground. She looked back at Ty Lee, who was watching with a stone expression on her face, and nodded her over. "Sometimes pain is the only way to make a stupid recruit learn."

While Ty Lee went to work with setting the bone and tying a splint, Suki walked off the field and drank from a waterskin. Once away, she could let the cold impersonality of being a trainer recede into the back of her mind and look at the recruit with purely feminine eyes.

Suki was struck by how _young_ the girl looked. Surely a Kyoshi Warrior should have been taller, have more sleek muscle in the arms and legs than what the injured recruit possessed. The girl—Yu, that was it, that was her name—Yu looked like…an injured child. And it inspired an immediate and unexpected surge of protectiveness in the woman.

_She's not too young to be a Kyoshi Warrior. It's just that you're so much older._

Suki had to fight not to shake her head at that. True, she'd seen a lot more than the recruit, had seen a great deal more of the world and the horrors that waited inside it, and had gained her own injuries from blades made of steel and oak alike. But she wasn't old. Not yet.

All of it made the girl seem that much smaller and younger.

It wouldn't last.

By the time the recruit's training finished, Yu wouldn't have a scrap of child-mentality left in her. Unconsciously expecting those stronger and more experienced to be able to assist and protect. Pretty soon _she_ would be the stronger, the experienced, and so it would fall to Yu to accept responsibility rather than seek ways to avoid it. Such was growing up.

She remembered her own realization that childhood had left her. She didn't know how exactly the shift in perspective had occurred—The War had done quite a number on everyone, and suffering had been the norm—but the significance of its depth had made it irreparable. After seeing dead family members burning in the funeral pyres, Suki could never again be a child, never could allow herself to be the one deserving protection and comfort. It was time for her to provide it for others, as it had been provided for her during her youth.

Yu was making the transition now. She'd probably been chasing it, now that Suki thought of it. It was peacetime, and there were plenty of kids out there who'd grown up listening to parents tell the glorious war stories. This was the first generation of kids who had reached adulthood without the assistance of an enemy nation stealing their childhood away. Kids were _wanting_ to grow up, and impatient for it to happen.

Suki guessed that was a good thing. In some ways.

* * *

The ruby firedrake was quite possibly one of the biggest mistakes in Fire Nation history.

Decades, nearly a century ago, a few rogue members of the Fire Nation priesthood decided that, since Firebending was supposed to "morally elevate and build self-discipline," they wanted to teach Firebending to troublesome beasts. Perhaps as a way to prove Fire Nation superiority—which was appallingly ignorant in itself, Iroh had always believed.

When the self-appointed glory seekers decided on which troublesome species of beast they would begin their work with, they chose the ruby firedrake.

Before the priests had begun their meddling with the laws of nature, the single most dangerous predator in the Fire Nation was the firedrake. Smaller than true dragons, while sharing none of their sense or intelligence, and lacking the broad-based fiery prowess of their draconic relatives, the ruby firedrake made up for its genetic defect through the incredible size of its pissed-off attitude. Flocks of firedrakes, who have, on their _good_ days, the temperaments of rabid armadillo bears, might at any time decide to flock together and wing off to some randomly unlucky village, then attack and burn everything for miles around.

Everything.

Ships. Caravans. Villages. Rocks. Each other.

No one knew why, exactly.

Maybe they just liked to watch the world burn.

To the astonishment of no one other than the priests, the Noble Art of Firebending seemed to have no beneficial effects on the ruby firedrake's good nature. At all. Just as it does for anyone, the ability to wield flame as a personal servant made the firedrakes even more dangerous.

This was done long before the near-extinction of dragons, and so by the time that any _sane_ people realized what the rogue priests were up to, there were several hundred firedrakes that could not only breathe fire, but make it grow and move with a thought and a wing flap.

Where before they had been obscenely dangerous, unpredictably savage nightmares, they were now mindless engines of destruction, and the only person in the world who had ever been able to kill a firedrake—repeat, _ever_—had been Avatar Roku.

That was before Toph Bei Fong.

To assault her with fire was less than useless: the black armor absorbed heat the way a meadow absorbed sunlight, and no matter how many times one of the drakes managed to hit the Earthbender with a direct stream of flame, the only reaction given was a widening of the arms in open invitation to try again.

When one of them descended like a sparrow-hawk to try his luck with fang and talon, he was clearly astonished to find that Toph could claw and bite with the best of them. She slipped past the beast's viperish snap of the fangs, got one arm around its long neck, and grabbed its wing joint with her spare hand. In less time than it took to blink, five earthen spikes shot upward from the ground like a hunter's trap and impaled the firedrake through its wings and soft underbelly.

"Blind Bandit, one!" she called to no one in particular, her voice muffled from inside the stone helmet. "Visitors, zip!"

The remaining drake was a quick learner. After seeing its comrade killed so quickly, it stayed up in the air and out of reach; the only way Toph could even guess as to its position was by each flap of the beast's wings, or the vibrations in the ground as its flame cascaded down in a strafing run.

"Dammit," she swore. "Where's he at?"

She felt Uncle return from the opening of the alleyway, four unconscious mercenaries now lying in the dirt. "He's staying airborne," he said. "You can't get a fix on him while he's in the air. I'll take him."

"Like hell!"

"Toph," he said, and while the old man's voice was soft and gentle, it had the authoritarian certainty that what he said was fact, not argument. "There are too many people here to treat this as a game."

Gritting her teeth beneath the helmet, she nonetheless turned and headed for the four unconscious mercenaries. "You've got one chance, got it? Otherwise I'm taking him down myself. _One chance!"_

"I hardly think I'll need two," he responded.

As Toph left the confined alleyway/battleground, with Uncle taking her place, she felt the drake pause to assess the new competition by landing on top of the highest roof. He was certainly a big fella—she could feel the vibrations of its pounding heart going all the way through the building's brick walls and down into the street. That heart had to be the size of her head, at least, and its lungs were equal to the girth of a pair of large feather pillows. She could even feel them begin to fill with air as the drake inhaled for all he was worth.

Which was right when Uncle, gripping a fallen crossbow in both hands, shot a lit grenade up its nose.

There was a loud squawk that sounded more surprised than anything, a muffled _boom_, and Toph knew what was coming next. Around six hundred pounds of inert, unmoving firedrake tumbled from the rooftop edge and landed hard on the street at a speed resembling something near terminal velocity. Windows cracked.

And she could still feel its heart beating. A little slower, yes, but no muscles were twitching in death spasms, and the beast was completely still. The only thing that struck her as odd was the sound of a long, continuous _hissss_ noise.

"Holy crap, Uncle," she said, approaching the motionless form. "I thought Avatar Roku killed all these things?"

"Apparently not. Don't get any closer, Toph, you might breathe it in."

"Breathe what in?"

"That grenade wasn't explosive. It was a sleep smoker."

Oh. That explained why the heart was still beating. "So he's just asleep?"

"Yes." Iroh settled back onto his haunches and slumped down an opposite wall, a little tired from all the excitement. "He'll most likely have the kind of headache that comes with hangovers when he wakes up, but for now he should be harmless. Just don't get too close or you'll fall asleep next to him."

Fat chance. She adjusted the face of her armor's helmet to include an air vent with holes small enough to scrub a little bit of the toxins as she breathed. She placed a hand on the dragon's sleeping form and found it hard, dry, and warm.

"Can I keep him?"

* * *

"The first day is always the hardest."

Night had fallen on Kyoshi Island, and the camp was winding down into something resembling rest. Inside the healer's tent, Ty Lee had one final patient to attend to, and was both surprised and delighted that it was the brave girl from the sparring grounds.

Yu seemed a touch worse for the wear, even with the assistance of Waterbender medics. She limped into the tent, back ramrod straight, her aura a light shade of purple rimmed with pink. The girl was tired, _very_ tired, but there was no way she was going to allow Ty Lee to see it on her face.

Warriors. Even when a healer needed them to relax, they kept right on fighting.

Ty Lee patted the knee-high table and rolled over to the supply cabinet. "You've got some vertebrae damage in your back, dear, and I can see it a mile away."

Yu stopped in her tracks and looked at her, eyes widening. "Is it serious?"

"Back injuries almost always are. Believe me, I should know." She gave the recruit a wink over one shoulder while her hands busied themselves in a drawer, gathering bottles of ointments and other supplies. "But in your case, not so much. It'll only get worse if you choose to ignore it."

Yu nodded, then sat gingerly down onto the massage table—_More of a bench to her,_ Ty Lee thought. _She's pretty tall for a kid—_and gritted her teeth. "The other medics fixed my wrist and everything else. Why not my back?"

_Because Waterbenders aren't the instant-heal miracle workers we think they are,_ she thought. Out loud she said, "Oh, they can fix body parts that break well enough. But you're vertebrae are out of alignment, not broken. A massage session or two should push everything back in place. Strip."

For the second time in just as many minutes, the girl's eyes widened. "I'm…sorry?"

"Massage," she clarified, doing her best to make her smile look encouraging rather than mischievous, "is the best way to heal your particular problem. It can't happen with clothing in the way. So come on, strip."

Yu's eyes strayed towards the closed tent flap. She bit her lip.

Ty Lee sighed and rolled her eyes. "Before you ask, no. This isn't a joke, or part of hazing the new girl."

"Is…isn't there any other way?"

"Of course." She reached into a pocket and pulled out several long, thin, glittering needles. "Acupuncture. You'll have to sleep with them while they're lodged into your spine, mind you, but you won't need to get undressed. You won't be able to, come to think of it."

The recruit's face turned dour.

Ty Lee softened her eyes, rolled up, and laid one hand on the girl's knee. "Look. You may be shy, but this is for your health. You need to get fixed, or you can't train, simple as that. And on an island like _this_, do you really think you're going to last long without someone else glancing at your naughty bits?"

Still, she didn't move. Her eyes dropped.

Ty Lee took her hand away and folded her arms. "I can make it an order, recruit."

"With respect, ma'am, no. You can't." She lifted her eyes to lock them onto Ty Lee's, and her voice went cold and authoritative. "Only a superior officer can give orders, or a veteran Kyoshi. I've already checked and you don't qualify for either."

Ty Lee's head lifted an inch, like the remark had been akin to a slap. The girl knew. A recruit, fresh from her first day of training, _knew_ that Ty Lee wasn't really a Kyoshi Warrior, not in the true sense. An honorary inductee, perhaps, but not a _true_ member of the sisterhood.

She'd been allowed to join simply because of her fighting prowess and mastery of chi blocking. After the accident, she'd been allowed to stick around due to her knowledge of the body and her ability to fix it up in ways that a Waterbender couldn't. But rank? Title?

Those belonged to the _real_ warriors.

"I see."

The girl was the one to hold eye contact the longest—she was a tiny bit afraid, but more than that she blazed with certainty that she was in the right—and Ty Lee found herself turning and placing the massage ointments back into the supply cabinet. She didn't bother looking over her shoulder.

"You can go now."

The girl held her spot for one second of hesitation, and Ty Lee could just as well imagine her thoughts—_Is the medic crying? Did I hurt her that deeply?—_but eventually she rose from the table and headed for the tent door, pausing when the pain of her injury broke through the awkward situation.

"My back… is there—?"

"Your back will be fine," Ty Lee said, eyes focusing on the simple task of organization. "Eventually."

Hearing dismissal in her voice, Yu walked out of the tent and closed the flap behind her, leaving Ty Lee in the one place that she knew she'd be in for the rest of her life.

Alone.


	3. Chapter 3

Fear was what made Ty Lee hesitate to knock on the door.

It was just an ordinary door, really, solid oak and iron handle, identical to all the other doors in the apartment complex. So why was she trembling in her chair like she was about to enter through the gates of hell?

No, that wasn't right. She knew that behind the door lay a wicked creature, but the path beyond would eventually lead her to a momentarily clear conscience. Inner peace. But she was, as usual, afraid to go in.

Her heart pounded against her ribs. Her breasts were already taunt, her nipples iron nubs against the fabric of her robes. _Don't just sit there,_ her brain said. _Either get on with it or go home. _Her knuckles hesitated to knock, inches from the door.

Without warning, it swung open. Her heart just about exploded.

"Evening, Ty."

June was descent enough, with her black leggings and black shirt—men's clothing—though the laced heels provided a splendid balance of femininity. She leaned against the doorframe with one tattooed forearm, while her other hand gripped the neck of a bottle. Her expression was bored, but loosening due to the alcohol.

"Your wheels need some lube," June said, gesturing at the chair with her bottle. "I could hear you squeaking all the way out here."

Ty Lee said, "Is this a bad time?" She couldn't even look the woman in the eyes.

June, for her part, got the message. "C'mon. Before the neighbors start expecting a show."

The younger woman pushed herself indoors, thankful that there were no stairs. She didn't want to be seen, even though everyone else in the vicinity was probably asleep or close to it. When she got far enough in the door closed behind her, and she heard the lock slide home.

June stood with her back to the closed door, arms crossed, studying her. Ty Lee blushed and stared down at her thighs. Then back up. Those _arms_…the woman was cut, chiseled out of stone.

"It's been a while, Ty. I was beginning to think you didn't need me anymore."

"Seven weeks, three days." Ty Lee looked down at her knees again, the blood rushing to her face, her words heavy with fatigue and shame. "I tried…tried to stay away. But after today I couldn't stand it anymore." She was appalled to feel tears stinging the corners of her eyes.

June was perceptive enough to see the girl's struggle.

"Hey."

She laid a small, strong hand on the side of Ty Lee's face.

"It's okay. I get it."

Ty Lee couldn't help herself from breathing in the woman's scent. She smelled of riding leathers and skin fresh from the bath.

"Let's head over to the dining area."

June released her face in the nick of time—Ty Lee thought she could burst into tears right there—and stepped back and to the side, giving the wheelchair plenty of room to come in. Ty Lee entered, her head bowed low in embarrassment.

"How's the other roller?"

"Fine," she muttered.

"It's pretty late. Does he know you're here?"

Ty Lee looked up at the woman, eyes full of pain. "Of course not. He thinks I'm still over at the camp."

June said nothing. Just walked around to the dining table—which held a bowl of fruit, another uncorked bottle, and no glasses—and sat down, level with her late night visitor.

Ty Lee stared hard at her hands. "I don't like to lie to him."

"So tell him the truth."

"I can't. He wouldn't understand."

"You told me he likes sex."

Sure he did. "_Normal_ sex. Healthy, _regular_ sex. Round peg into round hole. Not like…" She gestured uselessly at the both of them. "Not like this."

June raised a perfectly thin eyebrow. "There's nothing unhealthy about what goes on in here."

"Yeah. Right." She gave a bitter laugh, and shook her lowered head. "Well, I guess it could be worse. I could be _completely _gay."

"Nothing unhealthy about that, either."

"Look, I don't want to get into this kind of talk, all right? Let's just get it over with." She dug one hand into the interior pocket of her robe, clenching her teeth as her palm slid across her left breast. She pulled out a trio of gold coins and laid them on the table. "Here. It's…it's been a bad day. I can't cry. I…there's no place on this island where I can scream. I can't _get it out_ of me."

June looked at her, some unreadable expression on her face. "All right." Then she stood up, and she wore a mask of confident authority. "Go to your room then, little girl."

The room. Ty Lee knew it well. She rolled herself down the hall into what would have been a second bedroom, if June was one to have visitors who actually slept. The décor inside, even though it was familiar by now, still abducted her attention and frightened her.

Dense black curtains covered all four walls and hid any possible window views, as well as muffling all noise. The room reminded her of the interior of a dark cocoon. The light was very dim and indirect, coming from four different tea candles places in each corner.

The furnishings were hand-made by June herself, and very effective. The center of the room had a punishment bench made from a very sturdy table with low legs. Opposite the door stood a large X of wooden beams, with iron shackles for wrists and ankles. In one corner was a sturdy old armchair she must have snatched up from a noble's house somewhere, augmented with leather straps along the armrests.

Ty Lee had sat in that chair once before. It provided a perfect view of the racks of shelves along the opposite wall. They held coils of rope made from hemp and wool, several unlit candles, a leather slave collar, three different lengths of cane, several paddles made of wood and metal, and a vicious bullwhip from June's bounty hunter days.

Ty Lee knew it was vicious. Firsthand.

There was a wooden chest with a padlock on it underneath the shelves, holding instruments and supplies that Ty Lee had yet to see. She didn't know if she wanted to find out or not. Truth be told, she didn't know _what_ she wanted anymore. She knew that there was a world of pain in this room, and it made her hesitate from entering fully, her chair pausing in the doorway.

June's hand was on her shoulder again, cool and steady. Her lips brushed against Ty Lee's earlobe: "Get in there. Or I'll send you home right now."

She pushed herself in and swung beside the punishment bench, the memories playing out in her head of the last time she'd been there. Bent over. Tied down. June slamming blow after blow onto her numbed buttocks, stimulating nerves she thought long dead, making her hurt, making her _feel_—

"Strip, little one. Now" June was kneeling at the treasure chest, producing a key in one hand, talking over her shoulder. "And get away from the bench. That particular ship has sailed."

Undressing was always a chore, but Ty Lee had prepared before leaving the camp. Undergarments were already folded up beneath the healing tent's massage table, and would be waiting for her return tomorrow morning. The robe was torturously slow in coming off—difficult to untie a sash when one's fingers tremble so—but eventually she managed to pull it over her head, leaving just socks and slippers to take off.

"What, not naked yet?" June was facing her, hands holding a black bag full of paraphernalia that she couldn't identify. "MOVE, child!"

Hurried, Ty Lee pulled the slippers off, her face flushing. She would never admit it, but she loved it when June called her child, or little girl. It was a reminder that she had once been happy with the way her body served her. Now, though—

"Get over to the rack."

Ty Lee paused, confused. The rack? Was that the name of the giant X behind her? She looked over one shoulder, as if to find some kind of label or sign placed on the wooden beams to identify it, but was interrupted by June's palm landing a smack against the side of her face.

"I didn't say _look_ at the rack. I said _get over to it."_

That single hot, sharp blow nearly cracked the dam. But she didn't give in yet.

If she gave in without permission, June would beat her until Ty Lee couldn't show any skin whatsoever for weeks on end. That always made Teo suspicious, inquisitive.

She maneuvered the chair around the punishment bench and rolled over to the X until her kneecaps bumped against it. Without so much as a grunt of effort, June grabbed Ty Lee by her wrists, lifted the younger woman completely out of her wheelchair, and secured her arms to the upper part of the crossed bars. Her legs were left dangling, ankles free.

Ty Lee gritted her teeth against the pain. The joints in both shoulders were being wrenched from their sockets. The metal shackles were cutting into her wrists, digging into her skin, certainly there would be bruises, at _least_, maybe even cuts down to the veins and arteries—

"You weren't wearing underwear," June said. The woman circled her stretched body, dragging long sharp nails lightly against the soft pale skin of her visitor. "No breast wrappings. No loincloth whatsoever. You were planning this."

"Yes, madam."

"When was the last time you ate something?"

Ty Lee knew the real meaning behind the question. June had to know just how likely it was that the paraplegic would shit herself before the night was over.

"I haven't eaten anything today, madam. I'm empty."

"But you've had water."

A nod.

"How long ago?"

She _knew_, right then, what June's nasty game would be, and her entire face burned with shame for understanding.

"An hour. Maybe two."

"Long enough, then."

June walked out of the room and was gone for a moment. When she came back there was a tray being balanced on one hand, a large glass bottle being carried on it.

"Drink this."

She held the bottle to Ty Lee's lips, and cool water flowed into her mouth. She realized that she was actually parched, and drank greedily, swallowing every last drop.

"Good. Very good." June took the empty bottle away and placed it back on the tray, lowering both to the floor. Instead of rising, she rested on both knees. The tip of her nose was even with Ty Lee's waistline, and she ran her nostrils over the thin curls of pubis, placing a quick peck of a kiss onto the unfeeling lips of her captive's sex. June raised both eyes up to Ty Lee's, who was biting her lip and straining with the agony of hanging.

"Now, my lovely little girl, I know that sometimes you can't control yourself. But you don't have to worry about that. Not in here. Not with me."

The blood ran to Ty Lee's face again.

"But you've had a bad day, I can tell. And you've been away for so long. So I'm going to make sure that you catch up on all the fun you've missed. You can thank me later." With that, June stood up and gazed into Ty Lee's eyes for a long time—cool and controlled glacial ice, boring into frightened and helpless captive—before unleashing a savage slap across her breasts. "It's later. What do you say?"

Ty Lee gasped, cried out, "Thank you!"

Another slap, this time on the other breast. "Thank you, _what?_"

"Thank you, madam!" Oh, fuck, her nipples were so taunt they _hurt_, never mind what June was doing.

The dominatrix in question was now walking over to the supply shelf, fingers trailing lovingly across the stock of pain-inducing implements until it came to a stop. "This should do. Only bad girls have bad days, after all." She picked up a flexible bamboo rod and swished it through the air, looking back at Ty Lee with a promise of hell in her black eyes. "And you've been very bad. Haven't you."

It wasn't a question.

"Y-yes. Madam."

"Good. This'll help make it all better, then."

Ty Lee trembled, the biting cuffs now a familiar pain—a dull sting as she anticipated the new ones to come. June had never used the bamboo cane on her before. She had said it was only for highly experienced clients, those who'd willingly taken the kind of punishment that others would press charges for. She'd wondered about that cane, the taboo of it, the forbiddances. Hell, her nipples had been hard as glass beads as she'd left Camp Kyoshi, knowing that the cane might be put into play this night.

All of last week she'd been having nightmares. She would sleep soundly tonight.

She always did, after a session.

June walked back to Ty Lee and placed a loving, gentle kiss onto her lips. "Ready, little girl?"

A deep, steadying breath. "Yes. Madam."

Surprisingly, June came back to her again and placed another kiss on her lips—but this one was deep, sensuous. Ty Lee could feel the dominatrix's tongue slide onto her own like a snake, and she pushed her own tongue into June's mouth—just in time to have June pull away and deliver a vicious crack of the cane across her breasts.

It wasn't so much that it hurt. It was more like her brain exploded.

There was a small gap of lost time, and then Ty Lee realized that she was screaming as loud as she possibly could. The pain was unbelievable. She had time to run out of air, take two deep gasping breaths, and then June slashed at her again, this time across the abdomen. New lessons in agony shot into her brain like a lightning bolt into a sapling.

"Louder!" June yelled. The cane whistled, and threatened to cut into one breast. _"Scream! For! Me!"_

Ty Lee was sobbing now, her head bowed, tears trailing down her cheeks to spill onto the harsh red slices across her skin. She cried as loudly as she could, completely abandoned. If the neighbors heard, they would undoubtedly think someone was being tortured to death, but they were so far beyond importance that Ty Lee didn't even know the outside world existed.

June wasn't her usual self. Usually she waited between lashes. Now she was hacking away, slashing at Ty Lee's white skin, her stomach and breasts, the undersides of her arms, each searing stroke hotter and faster than the last. The captive let it all out, let _everything_ out: howling, sobbing, begging for mercy, pleading that June just fucking _end_ it, she didn't _care_ anymore, just make it _end_—all the weakness, all the sadness, everything she had been sucking up and holding inside since her last session.

Ty Lee gave up.

She gave it all up.

And yet…

When June paused to catch her breath—

–when the cane hung loose in her hand, drooping towards the ground—

–Ty Lee craved another stroke.

The pain was almost unendurable, but its loss was ten thousand times worse.

June placed a cool hand against the side of Ty Lee's feverish cheek. "Enough?"

Ty Lee was quiet, sniffling, trying to catch her breath. She didn't want to admit it. Her weakness. Her shame. Her sickness.

"Answer me, little girl." June's voice was hard and absolute once more. "Have you had enough? Or do you want more?"

The authority in her voice sent a delicious little chill up Ty Lee's spine. Did it even matter what she wanted? She was in June's power. Everything was up to her. Everything was out of Ty Lee's control.

"No answer? I guess that means you're done, then. No more—"

"Yes…more, please…" The whispered voice seemed to belong to someone else.

"What was that?"

"More. _Please_, June. Hurt me some more."

Her mocking laugh shriveled her. It hurt, just like the cane. June pressed herself close against Ty Lee's torso and spoke, her lips brushing against Ty Lee's own, the pain of leaning against the fresh welts causing Ty Lee to squirm. She knew that, June did. All part of the game.

"It's so _easy_ for you to admit that you're such a kinky little girl, aren't you? You love it so _much_ when someone's beating you, hurting you until you lose all control. But it's okay. That's what I'm here for. To give you what you're afraid to ask for from anyone else."

She looked down, and studied the fresh map of crisscrossing welts.

"Hmm. You _do_ have stamina, I'll give you that much. But I really think you've had enough for tonight."

Ty Lee was about to protest, to swear that she could endure another hundred strokes. June placed her fingernails against Ty Lee's collarbone, and slowly dug them in and trailed them down Ty Lee's front.

Echoes of the lashings shot through her. Ty Lee screamed again, her back arched forwards, her insides turning into rubber. For just the slightest of moments she forgot everything, and urine slid unchecked down one thigh and trickled onto the polished hardwood floor.

She gasped as June landed another hard slap against the side of her face.

"Oh, you bad little girl! You've gone and wet yourself!"

She reached up and yanked on the straps to undo them, and Ty Lee fell onto the floor, curled up in a ball directly in the center of the hot puddle. She shook and sobbed as she tried to get her breathing under control, and June was observant enough to give her just a little bit of time for recollection.

When Ty Lee did look up from where she lay, June sat in the chair, long legs crossed over one another, one finger tapping gently on the hardwood armrest. "We're not done yet," she whispered, her voice silken and husky. "Come here and thank me properly." Her legs unfolded.

Crawling forward with both elbows, Ty Lee dragged herself across the hardwood floor.

* * *

By the time Iroh and Toph made it out of the Lawman's Monastery, the sun was setting.

Captain Hotpants was nowhere to be seen. Apparently the sleeping smoke had worn off.

"Could've at least had some food in there," Toph mumbled as she placed one hand on her growling stomach, already forgetting about the now-loose drake. "If I was in charge, then the good guys could have some lunch while they tell their side of the story."

"Be grateful, Toph." Iroh patted her shoulder, his eyes scanning the buildings around them. "Interrogating those men will be an all-night effort. At least now there is an opportunity for us to find a teashop."

Toph gestured over her shoulder with one thumb. "Maybe you should ask our second follower of the day for directions?"

Iroh sighed. "You really do make me jealous of those feet, child." Then he turned around to see who was following them.

It was a woman. A very nervous-looking, very lovely, middle-aged woman.

To Iroh's aging-yet-still-experienced eyes, she was well past the years of early courtship and flirtatious dances, but she was still one of the lovelier creatures he'd ever seen in person. High cheekbones, easy bearing, almond-shaped eyes the green-blue color of tropical seas. Her skin was a dark shade of tan, clearly someone from the Water Tribe. Her thick brunette hair was pulled back into a simple tail, she wore the reds and blacks of Fire Nation robes, and she had no makeup at all.

Any foreign woman who wore Fire Nation clothing usually did so for one of two reasons. First, to beat the heat—one did not live in a land called the Fire Nation without experiencing some kind of extremity in temperature swing every now and then. Or, like most tourists and travelers from the far off lands, they simply felt like showing some skin.

Air temperature wasn't exactly on the sweltering side tonight.

Iroh didn't mind. He was old, not dead.

"I saw the whole thing," the woman said, blinking at them both from behind thin-lensed glasses. "In the market. Was that…were those things _really_…? I mean, I've heard about them before but I've never imagined I would get to _see_ one—"

"Yeah, yeah, lemme help you fill in the blanks," Toph interrupted, sounding bored and a little on the cranky side. "Those were ruby firedrakes, yes really, those were Water Tribe bounty hunters, yes really, I'm Toph and this is Uncle—yes really, _that _Uncle—and I'm gonna go find Captain Hotpants tomorrow and see if he wants to make friends with me. Got a feeling they're not so bad once you get to know 'em."

"You'll have to forgive my companion," Iroh said as he approached the lady and bowed. "I am Iroh, though everybody calls me Uncle. You've already met Toph Bei Fong." He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial murmur, "I'm afraid she isn't quite so pleasant when she misses a meal—"

"Those guards were questioning us for _three hours_!" Toph folded her arms and leaned back against a nearby streetlamp. "Let me tell you something Uncle, someday I'm gonna make my own private law enforcement squad, and there's not gonna be _any_ of this five-different-interviewers kind of interrogation after fights go down."

"Toph—"

"—it's just gonna be me, some guy taking notes, and the biggest meanest sonofabitch I can find—"

"If you're in the mood for a bite," the lady raised her hand in polite interruption, "I know of a place nearby that I was heading towards. The Zephyr Sea…?" She trailed off for a moment as she searched Iroh's eyes for any hint that he recognized the name. "But you can only join me under the condition that I pay for everything."

Iroh whistled through his teeth. "I have heard of the Zephyr. A very fancy restaurant, certainly. But I'm afraid I cannot accept the gracious hospitality of even the most beautiful woman without knowing her name."

"I can!" Toph pushed off of the lamppost and joined them. "Hell, even an alias is good enough. You can borrow one of mine for Royalty: Heywood, Lady Jahblohmie, Duchess of Shovit and wife of the Eleventh Earl of Upyerass—"

"She really does tone it down after she's had some food in her," Iroh sighed.

The woman smiled graciously at Toph. "I already have my own alias, but I'm afraid it's more of a penname rather than anything quite so…colorful."

"You're a writer?" Iroh's bushy eyebrows went up, and he the wheels in his head began turning.

"More of a reporter. I am chronicling the changes of this world solely brought about by Avatar Aang and his friends, while using mathematics and science to predict a likely outcome for the upcoming decades."

"I had a strange feeling about you. Written anything I might have heard of?"

"Not yet, I'm sure," the woman laughed as she turned and headed up the street. "My penname is Kata, and it's my very good pleasure to meet you both. That being said," she winked—unknowingly—at Toph and said, "dinner is on me. Let's go."

* * *

Appa let out a long _rowlmphff_ as Katara lowered a crate onto the giant beast's back.

"Oh, stop your whining," she chided him. "This is nothing compared to the last time we moved. Remember Sokka's trophy chest?"

The flying bison gave a gigantic snort, and Katara had to grin as she scratched deeply between his fifth and sixth shoulder blades. "Just one more box, then that's it."

The moan that issued forth was of the same tone and length that Vidia often gave when news broke about impending doctor visits. Only this time there was a bit of a sulky tone thrown into the mix.

"Look, Appa, I'm sorry. But these are things that we can't leave behind. Do you see room enough for crate storage anywhere on _me_?"

The bison seemed to acquiesce, but not before huffing what sounded like a suggestion on where to look. Katara rolled her eyes and slid down the soft fur of his hind legs, then made her way back inside the interior of their old—soon to be completely empty—home.

The Southern Air Temple had once been packed with students, trainees, and disciples of every nation. All had been non-benders. All had been hopeful that they could learn the ways of the long lost Air Nomad. All had put in rigorous amounts of training and patience and effort and time—for many, their education spanned well past a decade—and every single one of them had been crushed to learn that Avatar Aang was giving up.

_No_, she thought. The denial—the _clarification_—came to her with practiced certainty. _He's not giving up. No one is. He's changing tactics. Getting rid of a plan that doesn't work, in exchange for one that is certain to._

Aang had been loath to admit it, but eventually even he had to admit that water was wet when he was drowning in it: Airbending couldn't be trained into a person. No amount of meditation, no perfectly choreographed bending katas, not one single scrap of Airbending lore that he remembered was enough to make a normal person's body convert into that of an Air Nomad.

The Four Air Temples were closing down. Courtesy of Avatar Aang's decision.

The students of the Southern Temple had, of course, felt cheated and betrayed by his announcement that their school was closing. Many more had graciously accepted his decision and went back to their old lives, what remained of them. But Katara had seen the pain in Aang's eyes when the most hurt, those deepest cut, had hurled the one question at him that he didn't have an answer to.

_You took away Ozai's bending ability. Why can't you use that same technique to GIVE a person YOUR ability?_

He never had an answer.

Not one that he could say aloud, anyway.

As Katara climbed the stairs to Vidia's room, she did her best to rid herself of those memories. Dwelling on hurt feelings wasn't good for anyone, especially when the only thing that could be done was, in fact, already happening. Aang was releasing his flock back to the fields of their lives, while Katara was preparing them a home in the North Pole with the Water Tribe.

Vidia had never displayed any Airbending talent. Perhaps she'd been given the Waterbender's gift.

Katara walked from room to room, making sure that everything was already packed. Aang had left Appa at the temple as a beast of burden for the move, and was supposed to be meeting up with them mid-flight.

So imagine her surprise when Katara walked into her daughter's bedroom and found the Avatar sitting on the bed, his glider staff leaning against the far wall.

"Back already?"

Aang didn't bother rising. Just leaned back and looked at his wife through half-closed eyes. "You know, this is the one item of furniture in this temple that we _haven't_ attempted pregnancy on."

She smiled, and lightly skipped over to the small bed and fell onto her husband. "Really? Do you think this particular mattress is really a fertility altar in disguise?"

"Only one way to find out."

Aang drew his wife in for a deep, not-happening-nearly-often-enough kiss that made stars shoot past Katara's eyes and meteorites zoom around her head. When she came back for air, she looked dazedly into his eyes. Then her vision sharpened as she read him.

There was pain behind those eyes. A sad, weary pain.

"It was a tough one. Wasn't it?"

Aang seemed to know that there was no point in denying truth from his all-seeing wife. "It was the _last_ one," he sighed. "They didn't take the news very well. But it's over."

"You might want to tell that to your daughter." She stood and drew him up with her, wrapping both arms around his waist. "Vidia doesn't believe that this'll be the last time we move. Seems to think that being part Air Nomad has doomed her to being entirely without roots."

His face instantly changed from tired yet relieved to concerned and anxious. "Where is she?" he asked. "I wanted to surprise the kid by flying in through her window, but she wasn't here."

"The only other place she'd be," Katara looked out the window, down at the courtyard and gardens. "She's saying goodbye to Momo."

* * *

Aang's sandals were quiet on the soft grass. Not as quiet as his daughter, though; whenever the child was at the grave of her oldest and dearest friend, she could get lost in hours of imaginary conversation with the spirit of the departed flying lemur.

"You know what I miss most about Momo?"

Vidia didn't say anything.

"He could be the best friend you ever had." Aang looked down at his feet, lost in old memories. A sad smile danced in his eyes. "No matter how busy you were, no matter what kind of a day you were having, he was always happy to see you and be with you. He was always right there."

"Why are we always moving?"

Right to the hard part, then. "This is the last time."

A snort, one that even Appa could understand perfectly. "I've heard that one before. Plenty of times."

"Yeah?" No embarrassment in his voice. Just resigned honesty.

"Yeah." She looked up at her father, and he didn't see the sadness that he dreaded—instead there was an echo of his own resigned honesty that nearly tore his heart in two. "You said we were leaving the North Temple for this one in the South. And now we're heading to the North _Pole_."

Aang sighed. "I've said a lot of things, haven't I?"

"Why the top of the world, Dad? I know we've visited Gran-Gran a few times, but I don't really _know_ anyone there."

"That's just it, honey." He sat down cross-legged in the dirt, face-to-face with the nine year old girl. "You've been surrounded by people who want to be Airbenders your entire life. That's all you really know. But you're also part Waterbender. And there's plenty of other Waterbenders in the world—_real_ ones, not the wannabe benders you've been stuck with." He hated using such a term for his students—people who loved and respected him, and he loved and respected them right back—but you didn't call a hurricane a flood no matter how much it rained.

"I don't _care_ about whose a bender and who isn't, or what kind of element they're bending," she sighed.

Aang had no answer for that. All he could say was, "Look. We'll be there for a year, maybe two. Then, if you like, we can stay there or come back here. It'll be your choice for once."

She looked up at him. "Really?"

"Cross my heart. Avatar's word."

"So when I'm eleven, we'll live wherever I want?"

"Wherever you want. You're part of this family, V. You have input, same as anyone else."

"What about Mom?"

"She's agreed with me. And I'm a nomad, y'know?" he gave his daughter a smile and a nudge to the ribs. "I get around all the time."

* * *

The Zephyr Sea was one of the most beautiful places Iroh had ever visited. It was certainly the first teahouse that lacked an actual _house_ to it, instead existing on top of a mirror-calm lake. Several tables were set upon flat stones rising up from the water, and waiters would guide customers out to the tables in one of two ways: Waterbenders would ferry them in boats made entirely of crystalline ice, or Earthbenders would build bridges, stepping stones, and pathways that immediately dissolved into pebbles behind the last person walking. Floating paper lamps drifted through the air, casting luminous color over each table, steered by invisible Firebenders that would adjust the heat of their flame in order to guide them by this table or that.

Minstrels, mostly female, stood upon a number of raised rocks, singing songs of home, mysterious strangers, and first loves in hauntingly beautiful voices. Some carried instruments. All were young.

Iroh had heard plenty of things about the Zephyr. Rumors of its beautiful atmosphere had gone all over the city. Rumors that, delightedly, hardly did the place any justice.

"I think I've finally come home."

Kata smiled. "I'm so relieved," she laughed. "I wouldn't dare to do an interview in any place that didn't put my guests at ease. Shall I order a bottle of something special?"

"Why would you ask that?" Iroh said, his voice charmed.

"Because booze makes people talk more, Uncle, it's called social lubricant for a reason," Toph said. The blind Earthbender stepped around and sat down first, stretching out her legs and relaxing. "But don't get any special drink on my account. Just something that'll make me think this food's nice if I guzzle down a bottle of it."

"Then you'll need almost nothing," Kata said. "The food here is wonderful—though the women from my home would disdain it. They hate it when any cook makes them feel inferior."

"I dunno." Toph grunted, and Iroh could tell that she was using her Earthbending to observe the surrounding tables. "Lord and Lady Equis over there, having dinner with the Pai Sho prodigy twins. Couple of dukes, over there. And directly across from us is Warden Rhei, from Burning Rock. He was the Fire Nation Admiral of their Navy during the day of Black Sun. These aren't the kind of people that eat real food."

Kata was beginning to look worried that her interview would be coming from only one source of information, instead of both of them.

Iroh laughed. "If the meal isn't to your liking, Chief Bei Fong, I'll fetch you a steak and pitcher of ale myself."

Toph grinned, and her body language relaxed a little. "Well, then."

A server arrived just then with a fresh pot of tea, fruit, and bread, and told them that the evening meal would be served shortly. Three small cups were poured and passed around.

"In the meantime," Kata said as the server departed, "would it be too soon for me to start my questioning? Or should I wait for dessert?"

"What kind of questions are you gonna be asking us?" Toph asked.

"Everyone already knows about the heroes who fought during the War," Kata answered. "I'm more interested in learning about who those people are, today. In short, Chief bei Fong, I'll be asking you, personally, questions about you, personally."

"My favorite subject." Toph tossed a grape into the air and missed, but seemed to neither notice or care. "Uncle can go first. I'll get started on the appetizers in the meantime."

Iroh was game.

"Okay, first question." Kata actually reached one hand into her robes and pulled out a sheet of paper, cleared her throat, and every light in the restaurant went out.

Darkness fell like a hammer.

The sudden absence of every single light across the lake's surface stunned the crowd into an immobile silence. It was like being struck blind. For a second that stretched into a blind eternity, the teahouse was completely dark, entirely silent, everyone holding their breath like children preparing themselves to look under the bed.

Then Kata burst into flame.

Azure blue flame.

She burned like a festival torch, like a ritual bonfire, like a thousand signal flares ignited in a single instant—she burned like every single flame in the Fire Nation had become the fire that shot from her flesh. A waitress who was drifting nearby covered her face with both arms and screamed like a terrified child.

Kata's clothes burned to cinders in a matter of two heartbeats, dissolving into puffs of ash that whirled skywards into the night. Her hair sizzled away. Her dark skin began to lighten.

Her lips began to smile.

Naked, hairless, engulfed in blue flame, she stood up from her burning chair and walked onto the surface of the dining table, trailing burning footprints. As the stunned onlookers watched, they saw her eyelids narrow, her hair regrow into straight black raven's wings, her body slenderize from a middle aged woman's into that of a teenage girl.

Fire Princess Azula said, "Did you miss me?"

And instantly, there was a starburst of clarity inside of Iroh's mind that showed him every facet of the death he was about to experience. He was dead already. The rest was mere detail, like the lines in a play that lead up to the inevitable dénouement of the villain's climax.

The setting is perfect—the water of the entire lake around them instantly forms into ice as Azula draws in heat from everywhere at once, a display of firebending that makes his own skill beyond insignificant, and Toph's completely inaccessible; there is no way to pull up any earth through the ice-covered surface.

Toph Bei Fong is one of the most jaw-droppingly devastating fighters of any generation. General Iroh is the last of a dying breed of classic firebending Masters. If good guys ever absolutely _had_ to win, either of these two could emerge victorious. But only if they were aware of the game being played.

Iroh's decades of combat experience were useless, here. Toph's ability to see everything without sight was irrelevant. Their ability to strategize and adapt to changing circumstances, their political influence among royals and civilians alike, exquisite taste in fine arts, hard work to master their elements and themselves—all the points of pride in which either of them had spent the years of their life pursuing—they all combine to mean absolutely nothing against this ghost from the past that was now reborn, wielding strength and power beyond anything ever recorded.

Even Iroh's gifted strategic mind had become a dark joke: it was this skill that showed him he was dead no matter what. Fight back? Fire cannot hurt a being whose skin is literally hot enough to melt steel. Escape and evade? Should he run, undoubtedly he would be struck down before the second step could be taken. Bargain with her, try to talk? Azula had never been one to live in a world of reason, and he'd given her plenty of them when the War ended. Beg for his life?

Death was inevitable. And, in the case of the lattermost option, preferable.

There was a small surprise, just before the end: Azula showed that her personality had changed, just a little bit. When before, she would offer an explanation of the motives, the reasons behind her terrible actions, as if imparting the information of _why_ he must die would make the act any more understandable. Whereas now—

Now…

Now, she waited until she saw the full surprise of recognition in Iroh's eyes. Then, without a single word more, she made the flare of her body grow into a miniature supernova, and blasted away the world in a gigantic eruption that rocked the ground for a mile in all directions.

And the bodies of Iroh, and Toph, and every single worker and customer at the Zephyr tea house, became nothing but cellular ash.


	4. Chapter 4

Teo wasn't a man given to using profanity, but when he caught a glimpse of Zephyr Lake from the piloting chair of his newest glider, he let out a stream of curses that would make most pirates do a double-take. The lake was on fire.

The freaking _water_ was _burning_.

He stabbed a button with one finger, grabbed the steering yoke, and kicked his craft into a twisting dive that shot him down though half a dozen layers of atmospheric cloud pressure—ears popping like bacon on the griddle—before executing a perfect landing on the shoreside that would have impressed Avatar Aang.

There were already several people there watching. Midnight citizens, a few street cleaners and skeleton crews that did their work when no one was around. Teo's eyes scanned the crowd until he saw a uniform he recognized. "Captain Sakin!"

Captain Sakin was a tall woman in Earth Kingdom armor who tolerated zero bullshit and even less waste of time. Teo had met her at the end of the War, attending peace celebrations back when she was a cadet. It was only this long history of friendship that broke her attention away from issuing orders to several other guardsmen. "Teo," she nodded. "Long way from home."

"Word's already passed to Kyoshi Island," he said, wheeling up to her. "A traveler was spreading the message that there's been some attack. What's happened, and how can I help?"

"The Zephyr's been blown up," she said, "and we don't know how. Every time we get Waterbenders over to get a closer look, the flames melt their ice paths. The water's rippling too much for them to get a good look from beneath the surface. Maybe you can get a better view from above, see if there's a center or something that isn't on fire."

"Got it. And if there's casualties, I'll find a way to get them out." _No fucking idea how, but hey, one step after the other, right? Metaphorically speaking._ "Any idea how many were—_are_— in there?"

"The Zephyr always had a packed house." Sakin clenched her jaw, and Teo could see the line form between her eyes. "And it was always filled with high-class folk. Political leaders. I can only guess as to how many powerful positions in all our governments are now empty."

_And nature abhors a vacuum. Corrupt bureaucrats, start your engines. _"We'll figure that out later. In the meantime…" He looked back at the silent fire, an ugly thought coming to mind and making him pause.

"Spit it out," she snapped.

"Captain…" he looked back at her, and saw that she was thinking the same thing. "It's blue."

"I know. Get in the air, get us some intel," she ordered. "Then, when you've done all you can here, get a message bird over to the Fire Palace. Someone needs to warn Zuko."

"Forget the messenger bird," Teo said, snapping a pair of goggles over his eyes. "Soon as I'm done here, I'm sending him the message my damn self."

* * *

Wheeling herself home, Ty Lee promised herself that she would never visit June again. Once again.

_There can never be an upteenth time_.

She was a girl. She did _not_ like other girls. Not in that way. She wasn't supposed to, and that was that, and if she lived her life without going back there, then that meant it wasn't real, right?

Not that June was a bad woman or anything. Hell, before wheeling herself out the door, she'd surprised Ty Lee by giving her a gift: tucked underneath her chair, in a storage case, was a mini-crossbow from June's old bounty-hunter days.

"It's designed for women," she had said. "Small, compact, you can fit it inside your robes if you need to. Should make it easier to get home safe at night."

Ty Lee had accepted the gift with a startling amount of confusion—_what does this mean?—_and decided that she would figure it all out tomorrow, when she'd had time to think and calm down. Right now, all she needed to do was go home and get some sleep. She was exhausted.

_Getting tied up and beaten into orgasmic bliss will do that to a girl._

Sigh.

She reached her small apartment and turned the knob. Locked. She knocked, loud enough to wake Teo if he was already asleep—more than likely, given the hour—and waited for him to open up.

Nothing.

"Teo, come on." Her voice bounced off the doorway and back into her face. "I know it's late, I'm sorry if I woke you up, but will you unlock the door already?"

Finally she heard the rasp of the bolt being drawn back. When the door cracked open she bumped it with the front of her chair and rolled into the apartment, heading straight for the bedroom. She was exhausted. The fireplace was unlit, and every candle was dark; the pungent odor of smoldering candle wicks invaded her nostrils. "Why'd you blow out the lights?"

The closing door cut off the last dim illumination from the outside streetlamps. Followed by the dry, rasping click of the door bolt being locked.

Ty Lee stopped. She spun her chair around in the darkness, completely blind, while her eyes tried desperately to adjust. She sat motionless. Not daring to breathe.

"Teo?"

"I sent him out for the evening."

The voice was soft. And feminine. And very, undoubtedly recognizable, even after all these years.

Every single joint in Ty Lee's body turned to water.

Ty Lee had always been able to see the auras of people. It gave her exceptional night vision, in some respects, by always knowing where someone physically stood. A sinister red aura would shine, so to speak, like a lantern itself. Which made it all the more terrifying that, from the sound of her voice, Azula was no more than a single long stride away from her…but her aura was completely invisible.

"Please don't take a deep breath," the voice from the past said. "If you do, I'll think you're about to scream for help."

Ty Lee didn't bother with trying to convince her that there was no one to yell to.

"I…" she said thinly, speaking only with air from the very top of her lungs, "…uh…you could have killed me when I came in through the door..."

"Long before, actually."

"Then…you're not going to kill me?"

The darkness gave no answer.

She still couldn't see her aura. This absence terrified her. How was she to know what Azula intended if she couldn't read her aura?

Slowly, the glittering points that were the Fire Princess's eyes came clear through the blackness.

Ty Lee said, "Okay, then." She took in a deep, terrified breath, and closed her eyes. "Could you do me one favor? Before anything else happens?"

More silence.

"Could you…could you just…do it quickly?" Surprisingly, she did not feel the urge to weep at all. She was terrified, yes, of course—but there was an intelligent, analytical part of her mind that was nonetheless amazed that she didn't fear death itself, only the thought of it hurting more than life already did. "Get it over with fast, huh? I mean…I'm just…I'm scared of the pain."

Life had already given her plenty of it.

Azula's response was soft, silken as oil. "You're badly mistaken."

From the darkness came the _snap_ of thumb and forefinger, and every candle in the apartment lit up with amber flame. Now Ty Lee could see her, see the ghost from the past in front of her. She could see the Naked Lady.

Snow-white hair. Eyes the color of desert sunrise. Blood hued lips. Entirely naked, skin hairless and pure, devoid of any marks of time or age. Surrounding her body was a deep, solid aura the color of ink. No wonder she'd been invisible. Ty Lee had never in her life seen an aura that black.

Azula rose up from the chair she sat in, stepping forward on silent bare feet, hips a tiny bit looser than memory recalled, and crouched in front of Ty Lee to stare unblinkingly into her eyes. The silence stretched, and Ty Lee had to consciously restrain herself from babbling just to break it—she would die silent, stoic, not trying to weasel herself out of a punishment that was rightfully coming.

She forced herself, instead, to return the Lady's regard, studying her new appearance, seeing the transformation that had occurred when a teenage girl grew into…something entirely _other_. The Naked Lady was a little taller, her breasts fuller, and of course there were the changes in hair and eyes. But the differences went far deeper than that. The Fire Princess had been something like a relaxed spring—coiled even when not under pressure, constantly ready for any action, as if she could sit motionless while dozens of other imaginary Azulas filled the room with every possible leap, dodge, attack, or counter. She'd been reminiscent of a highly trained, disciplined, yet still entirely feral jungle cat.

The Naked Lady, too, had a quality of relaxedness, but hers was entirely loose and jointless. Instead of being potentially ready for every possible outcome, the woman in front of Ty Lee appeared certain that the only outcome to occur this night would be the one she created herself.

Azula watched Ty Lee observe her, study her, draw her conclusions, and when the wheelchair-bound woman finished, the goddess returned the favor, eyes roaming over the tired face, worn hands, trousers that hung from legs like curtains over bare skeleton. Ty Lee couldn't tell if she was simply observing for the sake of observation, or more likely deciding on where to land the first blow.

"Ty Lee," she said, her voice heavy and quiet with, of all things, _sadness_. "You deserved so much better than this."

And when the goddess returned her gaze to meet with hers, Ty Lee could see that it _was_ sadness, it _was_ emotion, it was the look of a long lost friend who had come home to find tragedy waiting.

It was impossible.

Ty Lee had betrayed her. That betrayal had rippled out into a decent into madness, and so Ty Lee would die for it. It was only a matter of time until the guillotine fell. She took a deep voice and tried to sound calm. "Life doesn't always give us what we deserve, does it?"

"I've heard of that saying before. In a way, it is both equal parts entirely true and completely false. Seems like a matter of semantics, in any case."

Well, well. Riddle-speak. Apparently Azula had changed more than just her look; the Fire Princess had always hated riddles.

"So…you're the Naked Lady. I've heard a bunch of rumors. Never thought they were true."

Still kneeling, eye-level, a flash of what could have passed for amusement came across Azula's face. "Is _that_ my new name? The Naked Lady. Well. I suppose it _is_ appropriate. Names are such amazing things. They can describe you perfectly, yet in order for it to be a true Name, one cannot write it themselves. It has to be given by somebody else." A slender finger, the nail pearlescent and perfect, touched full lips in ponderous thought. "I suppose, then, my name is like a present."

Ty Lee just stared.

Seeming to catch herself, Azula returned her eyes to her audience and smiled. Her canine teeth were both dainty and predatory. "It's been so long since you and I have spoken, Ty Lee."

"No kidding." The last time they'd chatted, Azula had been ranting and raving in a couple of distinct psychological archetypes while half-entombed in a coffin of iron in the heart of mental ward. Now she was all smiles and sunshine? For crying out loud, it was as if Aang had started cackling and twirling a moustache. "It isn't that I'm not happy to see you, Azula," she whispered. "But I can't help but wonder why you're here, if it isn't to kill me."

"I felt your pain," she said simply.

Ty Lee blinked at her to let her know that she hadn't revealed the secret of the ages. "I…was hoping you'd be a bit more specific."

"Oh, child," she laughed. It rang like festival bells, like music over fresh snow. "Have you learned nothing yet about spirits?"

This was cause for alarm. "So you're a _spirit_, now?"

"Is it really so hard to believe?"

"Don't _you_ think it is?"

"In what way is my opinion relevant to reality?"

"Are we just going to sit here all nigh answering each other's questions with questions?"

The sharp smile flashed again. "Would you like that?"

Lifting a hand, Ty Lee gave up.

Azula inclined her head, a gracious victor. No more _You will never rise from the shame of your humiliation and despair!_

"What I would like," Ty Lee said, "is for you to give me some space. Just back up a little. And put some clothes on, please. There's a spare robe in the closet."

Azula stood and walked backwards a step, lowering down onto a nearby guest chair and crossing one leg over the other. Relaxed. Confidence bordering on cockiness. Eyes never leaving hers.

A blush began to rise from Ty Lee's neck. "That's, ah…well. That's a 'no' to getting dressed, I guess."

"Apparently I am the Naked Lady," she said, as if it explained everything. "Though truthfully, have you ever known a spirit to wear clothing?"

"I think," she responded slowly, "the bigger question I have is why there's a spirit called the Naked Lady in the first place. And why you've only been helping a bunch of kids."

"Children call me the Naked Lady because they see me naked, and I look feminine. And the rest of the world assumes that it is a feminine trait that causes me to only help children. But I help them because I like children, and they like me. Most children deserve me. Most others don't."

"What is it that you're doing to them? They say you're healing them, curing sickness and all that. But is that all?"

"I only do three things." She counted them on fingers. "I repair their bodies. I give them permission to do what they want. And I forgive them."

"_Forgive?" _This made Ty Lee pause. Her eyes slowly grew larger, then narrowed. "You've got to be kidding. Forgive them for _what_? All of those kids were born years after you disappeared."

"Some things are difficult to understand."

An evasion? Anger—a kind of motherly, protective anger that Ty Lee did not know that she possessed—began to leak into her words. "_Try_ me."

"Oh, I don't mean that it's due to a level of complexity. I mean that it is difficult to understand because the reality of it is quite simple. In a way, it's much like the reason your body is covered with _those_." She lifted a hand, and her fingers flicked towards Ty Lee, and every welt on every body part all over her skin gave a tingle just small enough to make her jolt. Not painful. Just enough to let her know that Azula was aware of them.

The sad, loving smile that Azula gave her was one of a mother watching her daughter make the same mistake she had in the foolishness of youth. "Everything in the world that lives understands the concept of punishment. The pain of having done wrong. That's one of the reasons why pain exists in the first place: a smack on the wrist for stealing someone else's toy, a burn from touching a hot stove iron, a slap from courting a woman the wrong way, a beating for attracting the wrong man." She placed one hand over her left breast, on top of her heart. "But deep inside, in the places we can't look, people believe that punishment is the reason behind _all _pain,_ every _pain. You understand this."

Ty Lee didn't. Not entirely. But she could feel the beginnings of comprehension, like the first rays of a sunrise peeking over the horizon.

"So when we are hurt," Azula continued, "when a child is whipped, when a little boy is raped, when a young girl is tortured, when an adult is thrown into misery—in that dark place inside of them, _they know they deserve it. _Because if they weren't bad, bad things wouldn't happen to them. It's punishment from the world, from the heavens, from Life itself."

Shaking her head, Ty Lee spotted the hole in such logic. "That's not—I mean, y'know, for kids yeah, but eventually they grow up and they see the facts, find out that it's not just divine punishment—"

"But you never believe it."

"Well, sure, some people can't let things go, and they shouldn't be expected to—"

"You're not _listening_." Her face turned stern, and behind her eyes smoldered a fury that threatened to burn the apartment down and perhaps the world along with it. "I said, _you_ don't believe it. You believe you deserve punishment."

Ty Lee went still.

Her welts still tingled.

For a long, long time, she could only breathe.

Slowly.

Then, slowly, with numb lips and blank expression, she whispered, "What I did to you…and what a freak I am now…"

"Has absolutely nothing to do with the Naked Lady."

"There are some people who just don't _deserve_—"

"Listen to me now," she said, her voice intent. "I know there are bad people out there. I know there are cruel children who have hurt others for no other reason than that they could. I know there are men and women that have left trails of horrors behind them that scar the rest of the world. I know all these things, and a lot more besides, and I don't care. Crimes don't have anything to do with me. Nor justice. Nor law. They aren't what I do. My work is pain, and fear, and sadness, and guidance for lost souls."

"Those children…" Ty Lee said. "You put thoughts into their heads? Made them think they were okay?"

"What I did for them—_to_ them—cannot be put in words, Ty Lee. The true scope of actions can never be put into words."

"Then _show_ me, dammit. How do I know you aren't—"

Azula was suddenly _there_, right in front of Ty Lee, with one fingertip touching the crown chakra atop the woman's forehead…

…and the world washed itself away, and void took over…

The Abyss of Forever that Ty Lee found herself staring into was too dark to keep watching, but she couldn't blink. She flinched, tried to back away from her, tried to say, "Don't—don't do this—" but Azula held onto her and drew her close until she was everything that Ty lee could see, everything she could sense, and Azula didn't have to say anything because Ty Lee _knew_, she _understood_, the paraplegic shell _absolutely knew_ _the truth that was being written inside of her:_

_**Child.**_

_**You are forgiven.**_

_**Be not afraid.**_

_**Be what you are.**_

"You can't _do_ this—I don't _deserve_—

She felt those words take shape in the pit of her stomach, rise like a cottony ball in her throat, and Ty Lee hunched forward, wracked with agonizing pain in her gut, and leaned over so far that she fell out of her chain and onto her front, both palms slamming into the hardwood floor to break the fall. Something broke inside her chest, something thick and heavy, and all her rage and guilt and lusts poured out of her in an uncontrollable torrent of dark green mud. She cried and gasped, tears and nose flowing while she retched, turning her stomach inside out.

Leaving her insides empty, and clean.

Azula did nothing.

Ty Lee prayed that the killing blow would come soon.

A warm pair of hands came down and lifted Ty Lee from the floor, so impossibly strong that for a moment she wondered if she were weightless. Being placed back into the chair, Ty Lee wiped her nose and tried to clear the tears from both eyes with a sleeve.

"So much pain," Azula murmured. "Such a hard life. So much more to heal. And you were meant for so much better."

"Get away from me, please." She had to cough to get her voice cleared. "Just…if you're not going to kill me, then just get away. Please."

"I'm not here to kill you," she said, moving back to her chair. As she moved away from the mess on the floor, she gestured at it. The filthy puddle coalesced together and rose up into a floating green ball, and then gently drifted out through an open window. "I just hope you can tell my brother that. Anything to keep him and the rest of Team Avatar from trying to kill _me_."

Ty Lee pressed a hand to her forehead. "They wouldn't—" When had she last had a moment of peace? The last time she'd slept? "You're Zuko's sister, and you've changed, there's no more reason for them to think you're a threat—"

"Of course they could," Azula said. "At the very least, my existence is a danger to Zuko's position on the throne. It's the nature of any ruler to destroy threats to their rule. And I don't take it personally. It doesn't mean that we can't be together."

"What—?" The world seemed to darken around her. "What do you mean?"

"Ty Lee, please." She looked at her with an expression of obvious pity. "Aren't we past the point of playing like children? I know about your secret side. Do you understand? I have always known. I feigned ignorance in the past because I knew it might destroy our friendship."

She had to fight to keep from tipping over again. "What—what do you thing you know about me?"

"Ty Lee, I was your Fire Princess. You were close to me for years. You of all people know how much of a spoiled, heartless girl I was, no matter what kind of specialized training I received; do you think I never saw the ways you looked at me? Your hidden feelings for me have never been all that hidden. Not from me."

"You—" Words whirled in her mind, but none of them made sense. "But I betrayed you— If I stay with you, I can betray you again, can't I? I can tell everybody who you really are!"

"That," Azula said, "is entirely up to you."

The dark smoke in her head seemed to solidify into a skull full of black granite. "Why—don't you _hate_ me? I hated myself for so long for what I did…I don't…I don't understand why…"

"Sometimes there's no need to understand." Azula came forward, placing a cool palm against Ty Lee's brow. "Please, just take a moment and breathe. You aren't looking very well. Would you like something to drink?"

"I—no, I'm all right." Azula's hand was very different from June's. This one was incredibly soft, and warm, and when she lifted it from Ty Lee's brow the former circus acrobat felt a familiar ache at its departure. "I just…I'm very tired."

"Haven't been sleeping well?"

"No." She offered an exhausted bow of her head. "Not for a few years now."

"I'm sorry. I could help you fall asleep, but I have a feeling that would feel wrong for you." She knelt down to the floor and sat with both legs tucked underneath herself. "Ty Lee, I want you to stop pretending. A new world is being born right now, and I want you to be in it with me. The only way that will happen is for the both of us to be totally, brutally, absolutely honest with each other. We have to let everything out into the open where we can both see it."

"I…I don't think you can do that…you never have before."

"You're thinking about who I was. I'm not the Fire Princess anymore. Don't be afraid of me, Ty Lee. What is said here tonight need never pass beyond this apartment. Think: how hard was it, holding your feelings inside when we were together? When you didn't even need to? I have kept the secret of your feelings for me all these years. Do you understand that you don't need to hide anything from me anymore? That I accept you precisely as you are?"

She spread her hands as though offering a hug.

"Share with me what you want to say. Let yourself _out_, Ty Lee."

"I—" She tried to shake her head. How many times had she dreamed of not having to pretend that everything was all right? That she wasn't all sunshine and smiles? But what else could she be? "I don't even know how to respond to this."

"It's quite simply, and extremely hard to do." Azula smiled, and Ty Lee was caught off guard at how kind it was. "All you have to do is tell me what you want."

She squinted. "I…I still don't understand."

"Of course you don't. With the people that you have had to live beside for so many years, you've been trained to never think about that. Have any of the Kyoshi warriors ever asked what you want? Or do they tell you what you're _supposed_ to want? That is why they begin their training at so young an age. By the time they are old enough to live their own lives, they've been so indoctrinated into that lifestyle that they cannot even consider life outside of the sisterhood."

Ty Lee said nothing.

"But you are different, and you know it. You've had a real life outside of their influence. So I ask you again, _what do you want_?_"_

"I don't know."

"I am offering you," Azula said, spreading her hands once more, "anything."

Ty Lee said nothing.

"Ask, and it's yours. A drink of water, it's yours. A harem of lovers? Yours. Look at the world around us, Ty Lee. Pick something, and it is yours."

"You're not royalty anymore," Ty Lee said. "And this isn't the Fire Nation. You don't have anything to rule over, so stop kidding around with me."

"Playing will come later. Right now, I have never been more serious." From the glow of the flickering candles, Ty Lee could see twin gleams in Azula's eyes. "Pick something. Anything."

"All right…" she shrugged, thinking of something grand and expensive. "How about…one of those purebred lion-horses from the Fire Nation stables—"

"Done."

"Please. Do you know how rare and expensive those things are? With that kind of money you could buy an apartment in Ba Sing Se's upper circle—"

"Would you rather have an apartment there?"

Ty Lee went still. A cold void opened up in her chest. In a small, cautious voice, she asked, "What if I did?"

"Private apartment?"

She shook her head a fraction of an inch. "An entire complex."

Azula didn't so much as blink. "Done."

"Those are privately owned—"

"Not anymore."

"You can't just—"

"Yes I can. It's all yours. Is there anything else?"

She stared.

"Ty Lee?"

"I just…" she shook her head blankly. "I can't figure out if I'm dreaming, or if you're still completely insane."

Azula did not react to the subject of her previous mental health. "Neither. I am trying to impress on you a fundamental truth of our relationship. A fundamental truth of yourself. Do you understand, now? _You can have anything you want_."

The concept left her dizzy. "What if I wanted—what if I wanted to be able to walk again? What if I wanted to be a teenager again, like you?"

"Would tonight be too soon?"

"How—" Ty Lee couldn't get a breath in. "How in the world could you possibly do that?"

"Right now, we're only discussing what. The matter of how is a different, fascinating issue. We'll get there in due time."

If only her head would stop spinning—why did Azula have to come back _now_? This would all be easier to comprehend if the thought of being alone and unwanted would stop screaming inside her head. "And in exchange?" she asked finally. "What do I have to do for you?"

"You have to do what you _want_."

"What I want?"

"Yes, Ty Lee. Precisely. Just that. Only that. Do the one thing that Team Avatar hates most: make up your own mind. Build your own life. Do what you want. I know that you were the kind of person who craves excitement and limitless freedom, a life of no boundaries or rules. Live that life. I know you want to do exciting things that no Kyoshi Warrior or Fire Nation Royal or Avatar acolyte would ever do. Give yourself permission to do those things. Allow yourself license to do what you think is best for you."

"I—can't…I can't just…break away from them."

"But you can."

She couldn't breathe.

She couldn't blink.

Even thought was impossible.

"You can have every one of your dreams. Turn away from the one-size-fits-all cloak of society's rules, and be your naked self. Leave the others. Join me on the path of living life. Be my friend again, Ty Lee. Be my partner. Be…my love."

Without understanding how she was moving, without even intending to move, Ty Lee found her right arm snapped forward. A silver arrowhead of cold steel was aimed directly Azula's throat, its metal casting fire-colored reflections up her face.

Only gradually did Ty Lee begin to understand that this was her new crossbow, and it was clenched tight in her right hand.

"Liar," she whispered. She wasn't dizzy anymore, or tired. "Azula always lies. That's how it always was. You're a liar, you're a trickster, and you're trying to turn me into a monster like you. You've been lying all along, haven't you?"

"I told you." Through the clean silver light of her blade she stared into the face of a girl whose features were beautiful, but now seemed as powerful as Sozin's Comet on a collision course with the planet. "I am not the Fire Princess anymore."

"Someone should've killed you a long time ago," she whispered. "I never thought it would wind up being me, but surprises seem to be the order of the evening."

"Kill me?" Azula gave her the wise, sadly-kind smile of a mother. "For what?"

"You're supposed to be dead in the _first_ place, for one!"

"Yes I am," she said simply. "I am also supposed to be the same age you are."

The crossbow wavered, just a bit.

"I was once everything you think I am now. A liar. A trickster. Now, though, I am the only person on the planet who can help you regain your legs. I am the person who never hurt you for desiring another girl. I am the person who wants nothing from you but that you make up your own decisions. If your next decision is to become a murderer, simply over…who I was in the past…then I won't fight it."

The floor seemed to soften into mud beneath Ty Lee's feet. "You—you won't even try to fight me—?"

"Fight you?" In the metallic glow, Azula looked genuinely astonished. "Ty Lee, when I told you that you could do anything, have anything that you wanted, did you think that I was excluding my life from the bargain?"

"Azula—"

Her name was a gasp of anguish.

"But what will happen when you kill me?" she asked with the air of a parent reminding a child of something she ought to know. "What will happen to all those people out there who have sickness and disease and injuries that even the Avatar cannot help? When I die, the things that I can do to help the world die with me."

The blade trembled.

"And I could do a much better job…if I had a friend to stand by me…"

Her vision swam.

"I…" A whisper of naked pain, and despair. "I don't know what to _do_…"

Azula gazed at her, a loving and gentle mask, though only a hair-trigger's twitch shy of an arrow's terminal point.

And what if her face was not a disguise? What if the new face of Azula was her real face, the face of the beautiful creature that she saw right before her: a divine spirit who had cared for her, had healed and helped her, had been a friend in a cold and lonely world when no one else would stoop that low?

What then?

"Ty Lee," Azula said softly. "Who are you, and what do you want?"

* * *

"And you're sure?" Zuko asked. "The exact same color?"

"My Lord, it's been over twenty years," Teo said, "but I've only ever seen that color flame come from one Firebender. Trust me. It's not something you forget so easily."

"No matter how hard you try," Zuko muttered.

The paraplegic said nothing. He'd flown hard the whole way to the Fire Palace, pushing his craft to the limit and far beyond. Thank the spirits for tailwinds. Now, with his message delivered, it was time to see what Zuko would do with the information.

"All right, then." Zuko stood up from his throne and took a deep breath. "Whatever it is, it's something worth paying a lot of attention to."

"Sire. Is it…can it be your sister?"

Zuko's good eye twitched. "It can. It's not likely, though. She's been missing for over twenty years, and she's most likely dead. But I'll be damned if I'm going to assume it isn't her, anyway." He looked at the other men seated around the planning table. The Palace had been called into Emergency Session not ten minutes after Teo had landed, and currently all the minds behind every military, political, and covert operation in the Fire Nation were situated around the table.

And every single one of them remembered Fire Princess Azula.

"We all had a feeling this day would come," Zuko said. "You all know your roles, you know what to do. If it's Azula, we'll be ready. If it isn't, then we'll have time to learn about this new player in the game. That is all."

The men rose, bowed—with the exception of Teo, who was resigned to simply lower his head.

"Teo, you stay for one moment."

As the men drifted out, Teo waited until the door shut fully before wheeling out from behind the table and approaching the Fire Lord. "Zuko. Where is Mai?"

"That's why you're still here. She's already six months along, so she's at her family estate in the Pyonmin Dai valley. It's supposed to be relaxing over there." His mouth twisted into a wry smile that wasn't quite grimace. "But I need her to be safe more than relaxed. Go to her and tell her everything you told me. She knows that the Palace is the safest place to be, and she'll be smart enough to head back here immediately."

"Got it. What about Avatar Aang? I'm pretty sure I can make the Southern Temple in a day or two."

"Aang's closed down the temples for a while," Zuko said. "He's taken his family to the North Pole. Does your chair have that kind of range?"

"Top of the world? It'll take me two weeks."

"I'm sending out fifty messenger birds just in case. If you can beat them there, Teo, I'll name my son after you and buy you a bottle of firewine."

Teo was already making a beeline for the door. "Make it a case."

* * *

She didn't remember putting away her crossbow.

She didn't remember collapsing into a chair that was never meant for her to sit in. Nor did she remember drinking tea from the half-empty cup that she found in her shaking right hand. Ty Lee could only remember that the most dangerous person in history was now sitting two feet away on the couch.

And she wasn't even afraid.

Only stunned.

"After all, Ty Lee, you are the last person I really had as a companion. I'm just sorry that your life became so ruined after the War."

Azula sat relaxed. The fireplace was bright and cheery. The candles all lit. The apartment warm.

Everything was ordinary.

As though this was merely another one of their pre/post-battle conversations, or a casual evening chat that Ty Lee had missed for so many years. As if nothing had happened. As though nothing had changed.

"The Avatar isn't a savior to the people. He's a false hope. A cancer, and nobody wants to burn it out. Not the citizens, not the royalty, not even the greatest fighters in the world, and do you know why? Because the only ones who know that the Avatar is an illusion are the people who he could not help. The crippled and sick and starving know that he won't help them. They know that he'll only tell them to _stay strong_ and _keep trying_, and that a person has to _live their own life_."

She couldn't argue.

"I've changed over the years, Ty Lee. I've become something so much more, inside and out. I am the only person on the planet now that can do the things that the Avatar could not. I am the only person who even dared attempt it."

Words were beyond her.

Azula leaned forward, drawing close. "If only you could know how I have longed to talk with you like this, Ty Lee. All those years—since the day we first met. I watched you, saw you grow into beauty and strength, biding my time until now, tonight, when you're finally ready to accept who you really are and your true place in the world."

Numb words escaped her numb lips. "With you…"

"Exactly, Ty Lee. Exactly. You are with me." She leaned even closer, eyes clear. Steady. Utterly honest. "_Stay_ with me."

"I am not," she heard herself say, "like you. I'm not on your side. I'm not a monster!"

"Neither am I," Azula said. "Look at your guilt. It's much lighter than before, isn't it? Is that monstrous? I've done the same with hundreds of others, and I've healed their bodies and mended their hearts. Is that monstrous? Have I attacked you? Poisoned your drink? If I am hurting you, simply say so, and you will never have to see me again. Ty Lee, I am _asking_ you. I am asking you to do the right thing for yourself. Turn your back on the status quo. On all those people who think they know what's best for you, but _aren't_ you."

Words wouldn't fit themselves into the answers she needed. If only Suki were here—Suki would know what to say. What to do. Suki could handle this.

Ty Lee knew that she couldn't.

"I'll…I'll turn you over to the Kyoshi Warriors. They will know what to do."

Azula's eyes fell downward, and a silent sigh came from her lips. "I'm sure they will. They've already lost a fight against me before; you'll give them just the excuse they need for a victorious rematch. And when they come to execute me, will that make you happy? Will that make your smiles reach your eyes again?"

"They won't—they wouldn't _kill_ you—!"

"Well, of course I hope you're right, Ty Lee. You'll forgive me if I don't share any blind loyalty to your comrades. I suppose it does, in the end, come down to a question of love," she said thoughtfully. "That's what you have to ask yourself. If you love is stronger with the Kyoshi Warriors, or with me."

"It's not… It's not _like_ that—"

Azula lifted her shoulders. "Perhaps not. It does not matter, really. Take your time. Think about it. This island is well secured, and I'm certain it wouldn't do well for me to try to escape on a ship tonight. I'll be right here, so you'll always know where to find me. Please come back when you decide."

Inside her head, there was only a thunderstorm. Around her heart, a snake coiled and sank its venom into her bloodstream.


	5. Chapter 5

In the darkness, wrapped in a blanket of silent peace, Suki knelt on both knees and breathed a slow, calming breath. Meditation was normally done in the morning while facing the rising sun. Though lately, with the pressures of an ever-growing territory of operation, several of the elite female guardians were forced to undergo multiple sessions to maintain their cool headed discipline. Even high command.

Tonight's meditation would have to be quick. Sokka would undoubtedly be waiting for her back at home by now, and she didn't want to spend so much time here that she walked through the door only to find him asleep. When it came to having stress worked out of her, meditation only went so far.

The tent flap to her quarters burst open like a whipcrack, spilling in the sound of panting breath and rusted wheels. There was enough torchlight in the sentry fires beyond for Suki to glimpse the silhouette of a half-collapsed woman in Kyoshi green robes…sitting in a wheelchair.

"_Suki_…" The voice was a hoarse half-whisper. "Are you here?"

"Ty Lee?" She was at her side in an instant. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?"

Ty Lee took her arm in a grip of desperate strength, and used it like a crutch to haul herself close. "Aang…" she said faintly. "I need to talk to _Aang_—!"

"He's gone. He started closing down the Air Temples weeks ago—I assume by now he's already heading for the North Pole."

"So he's…he so far _away_…?" Ty Lee's voice had a sharply bitter edge. "Like she already _knew_…"

"Ty Lee? What's going on?"

"Listen to me—you have to _listen to me_—" Ty Lee reached both hands out to her, shaking, practically clawing at Suki's robes. Suki wrapped her arms around the woman and guided her, chair and all, into the center of the tent, closing the flap behind them for privacy. "You can't—_please_, Suki, promise me that it'll be an arrest, promise me you're not going to _hurt_ _her_—"

"Ty Lee. You have to answer my questions." Suki's voice was stern, commanding, without the tiniest trace of concern. She was forcing herself to be calm, over-controlled, in the face of Ty Lee's near hysteria. "Tell me. Have you been attacked? You have to tell me what's wrong."

Ty Lee hunched forward, face in her hands, then looked back up. Her eyes were raw, and red, and her face looked swollen as her mouth searched for the right words. For a long time Suki didn't know if Ty Lee would answer, if she _could_ answer, if she could even speak coherently at all. The woman seemed to be struggling with something deep inside herself, as though she fought desperately against the birth of a monster within her ribcage.

Ty Lee's symptoms were…familiar.

Suki had a feeling she knew this monster. She'd felt it before, a long time ago. A real monster, _too_ real, one that could eat anyone alive from the inside out, especially warriors.

Fear.

This was the wound that Ty Lee had taken. This was the hurt that had her shaking and stammering and too chaotic to form a coherent sentence. Never before had she ever seen anyone this deep in despair.

The Kyoshi warrior's mouth tightened. "This is really bad. Isn't it?"

Finally, after what seemed forever, Ty Lee spoke. "Suki…" she spoke slowly, painfully, as though each word ripped away a fingernail by the root. "I have…bad news."

Suki stared at her.

"Bad news?" she repeated blankly.

What could be bad enough to make a warrior—Ty Lee herself—collapse into near-madness? What news could make Ty Lee look like the world was on fire?

Then, in eight simple words, Ty Lee told her.

And with those eight words, Suki knew that the moment which would define her life had arrived.

All the victories of the past that she had won, her strategic intellect, her talent with the fan, her unmatched skill with the sword, her dedication to her family and friends, her devotion to the organization that was Peace. All of it had led to one moment.

This moment.

"_The Naked Lady is Azula. She's come back."_

There was one more battle that needed to be fought. And because Suki was who she was—pure warrior, pure strategist—within a single breath she knew what had to be done. She rose.

"Ty Lee, wait here in this tent."

"Wh-what? Suki—!"

"That's an _order_, Ty Lee."

"But—but—but she's _different _now—"Ty Lee said, clutching desperately at her commanding officer's hand. "What are you planning on _doing_?"

And it was the true measure of a Kyoshi Warrior that, even now, she told the truth.

"End the War."

* * *

In the dark gloom of a midnight home, two masters of combat meet.

One is beautiful, and hard, with skin painted white and clothed with forest green robes. The other is proud and fierce, dark skinned, with eyes that glint like ice in the light of a full moon.

To each other, they are more than spouses, better than lovers. They are complimentary halves of the same warrior. Though they were born thousands of leagues apart from each other, they are of one mind and body. It hardly matters who says what.

Now they know the truth.

For more than a decade, a war has continued to live on, sleeping in the soul of one single hidden enemy.

Now, together, painted dancer to arctic wolf, these two decide to win that war.

* * *

Snuffed candles drifted gray smoke into the air. The ghostly white jewel of the full moon bathed a lady in silver as she relaxed in a chair, waiting.

She had told Ty Lee that she would. It was the truth.

For once.

The nightfall was spreading throughout the world's kingdoms.

The darkness of the land was no hindrance to the lady. Through a subtle shift in her mind's focus, she could sense old bonds being stirred to life. Bonds not of love, but of the myriad opposites: bonds of hate, and fear, and blood. Wherever the old enemies dwelled, she felt their hearts through her perception.

In the night, the lady felt Ty Lee's anguish, and it was good. She felt her brother's heart awaken with nervousness and trepidation, aware of the possibility that she was finally making her return. This was beyond good—it was delicious. She could taste the beginnings droplets of his fear, making her yearn to drink deep.

Finally, the lady felt the grim determination of two married warriors approaching the building from the outside cover of night. She'd bested them both in battle before, separately. They thought that together they stood a much better chance.

This, also, was perfect.

The lady felt them stride up through the empty street. She could practically hear the cadence of their boots on the ironwood planks outside. A pair of lovers.

Warrior lovers.

Only two.

Two was enough.

* * *

Alone in the quarters of Kyoshi High Command, Ty Lee fought a battle with her heart.

She was losing.

She sat, entombed in the chair, just another piece of furniture. Never had she imagined that there could be this much pain in the world.

Physical pain was next to nothing—she'd always been resilient, and not just for a girl. At four years old she'd been able to take the agony of acrobatics training without so much as a complaint. Then the hard days and nights working in the circus. Then the stress of fighting and training alongside Azula. Lovely Azula.

Fire Princess Azula.

Nothing had prepared her for this.

She wanted to rip open her breasts with bare hands and claw out her heart.

"What am I doing?" The question started as a low whisper, but soon grew to a howl that an animal with its leg caught in a trap would recognize. _"WHAT am I DOING?"_

But she knew the answer.

She had done what she was _supposed_ to do.

She had done her _job_. She had done what was _expected_ of her, _ordered_ of her.

And now she couldn't imagine why.

_When I die_, Azula had said so calmly, so patiently, so unlike Azula, _the things I can do to help this world die with me._

Everywhere she looked, she saw the face of the only real hope she had left in the world. She didn't care what Azula had done before—that was all _decades_ ago. She didn't care about who ruled the Fire Nation, or who was dangerous, or who was a murderer. Everyone she knew had shed blood in battle, spilled it from their own bodies and taken it from the bodies of others. The only person on the planet who hadn't killed anyone by now was the Avatar. Azula was the one connection left to the times when she was truly happy, and a possibly a happy future with her, and even love…

…and she had just sentenced all of that to death.

_What can I do to make things RIGHT again?_

And no matter how hard she struggled, no wise saying of the Avatar, no patriotic code of Kyoshi, not one single scrap of education she'd learned from the past could help her. Her brain had no answer.

Her heart, on the other hand, did.

Ty Lee stopped.

Her agony died.

Azula was right. It was simple.

All she had to do was decide what she wanted.

* * *

The apartment's front doorway provided an appropriate angle—directly in front, nowhere to hide—for Azula to make final assessments before beginning The Game. Like all strategy games, the coming end would proceed with remorseless logic. What a shame her brother couldn't be here. Or even Uncle.

She preferred educated opponents.

Suki entered first, fans already out, moving to the left and stopping, robed body frozen in a battle ready stance. Adrenaline and tension held her so disciplinedly at-the-ready, so motionless, that she almost seemed to hum. Too tense. It was an insult to call this woman a warrior at all.

Now, Sokka—he was something else entirely. The highest-quality product of his brutish, obsolete kind. He simply stood looking grimly at her, hands gripping his leather-wrapped broadsword, completely ready for any action, on his face a mask of calm certainty. It would be a pity to kill him; a man like that would make a wonderful toy in the future.

But, thus was life. Sacrifices must be made for strategy, and she needed the Waterbender girl to be nicely in grief.

Azula called upon her spirit, gathering energy into her vision, and held it whirling inside of her eyes. The two assassins subtly changed, though not to the physical eye. Her perception took in the measure of their auras.

They were both the color of stormclouds, bruised purple and blue, flickering with dangerous lightning, building like a tornado's rotation. Arcs of invisible electricity jumped from one aura to the other; this duo cared deeply for one another.

"Only two?" she asked, still sitting in her chair. "You know, the last time either of you fought me, it didn't turn out too well."

Sokka inhaled through his nose, offering a grin that a crocgator would recognize. "I was about to mention something like that about you going up against a member of the Water Tribe."

"Funny you bring her up." Azula's smile deepened. "How _is_ the little sister?"

"Don't—" The thundercloud that was Sokka broiled with power, and his knuckles flared white. "Don't even bother talking about her. Right now, all you've got is us."

Azula waved this aside. Family was a boring subject to pursue, now.

Suki lifted her fans into the balanced two-handed guard of her form. An effective style, yes, but ancient. The method of using fans to defeat your enemy was beautifully poetic, if not sadly unrealistic. "You won't be running away from here, Princess."

"Run away? Mercy." Azula allowed her grin to slacken back into a polite, conversational smile. "This world has gotten so boring that I can't imagine a more pleasant way to spend the evening than in an entertaining duel."

Sokka brought his sword into a Rising Sun ready. "This is a little bit more than entertainment."

"And a little less than a challenge. Now, please, you two, can't we just be friends? I would _love_ to make peace with both of you. Become lifelong friends, host tea parties and orgies, that sort of thing. Swords always make everything so violent. I only want to let bygones be bygones, and continue living life."

Sokka moved toward her with a slow, hypnotic grace, as though he glided on ice. "Why do I find that difficult to believe?"

Suki mirrored him, swinging wide toward Azula's left. "Could it be because of the old motto, _Azula always lies_?"

Azula sighed, uncrossed her legs, and stood. "Aren't you even going to _try_ to arrest me?"

"Sure." The man spoke quickly, like he was anxious to get the preliminaries out of the way so that he could fight already. "Give up, and come quietly."

His wife joined in, "You'll be given no more opportunities to surrender."

"Unless either of you happens to be carrying a certain bald Airbender in their pocket, I hardly think I'll need one."

Suki moved first. In the blank second that followed, while Suki switched her fans from guard to an attack, Azula gestured with one lazy wrist. A whipcrack sounded through the air, and a smear of clear-flashing air swung out like a reptilian tongue.

Shredded paper and wood did not bounce when they hit the floor.

Suki gaped at the splinters of pine she held in both hands. "What?"

The clear-flashing whateverness that Azula had flung returned to her palm. She gazed at it, focusing her will, manipulating the energies of the swirling compressed vortex of air that she held. The atoms gathered closer together, transforming from air to steam, then to flame, then plasma, then water, then black stone. Coal stone. A slight tilt of the head, and that stone continued to compress, coalescing into translucent whiteness.

Azula hummed delightedly when the stone completed its transformation. What had once been coal was now diamond.

"Tell you what," she said. "I'll play fair. No bending, no elements from now on. Just our threesome, and our weapons."

She began to giggle, and as her bell-like laughter began to ring out, the diamond lengthened, shooting outward from her palm, impossibly quick and impractically straight, its crystalline edge becoming sharper than an atomic diameter, its diamond tip ruthlessly unbreakable.

Then she turned it upward, lifting her weapon in a one-handed fencer's salute, appearing to study it as one might study the face of a newborn child.

"If you only knew," she whispered softly, perhaps speaking to the husband and wife in front of her, or perhaps to herself, or perhaps even to the diamond blade now lifted in mocking salute, "how long I've been wanting to do this…"

Sokka chose that moment to charge forward and attack. Most swordsmen preached the need to attempt "Death from a single stroke," and other such poetic lines. He followed the adage nearly to the letter, attempting to separate Azula's head from her shoulders with one well-placed slice…and then followed up with twenty-three more just for good measure.

Not one of them came close to landing on flesh.

While deflecting a rain of steel-streaked cuts from Sokka, Azula noticed Suki drop the ruined pieces of her fans and roll swiftly to the left, wrapping one hand around the leg of the room's only table and flinging the entire piece of furniture like an oversized discus. Azula barely managed to lift herself enough that she could backflip over it instead of having it connect with her spine.

"Well," she said, landing with a laugh. "It looks like you like your women strong!"

Azula's backroll bought Suki enough time to reach over her shoulder and draw her own twin blades, a pair of wazikashis thinner and shorter than Sokka's, but just as sharp and quicker to slice. She charged, headlong and unafraid, and Azula sensed that her face was red with fury beneath all that ridiculous paint.

"You should have stayed _out_ of our lives!"

"And you should have stayed out of this room." Azula neatly sidestepped, cutting at the woman's leg, yet Suki met the cut as she passed and managed to sweep one blade behind her head to slap aside the casual thrust Azula aimed at the base of her skull—but the Kyoshi Warrior's clumsy charge had put her in Sokka's path, so that the man had to twist around his wife's body.

Directly towards Azula's thrust.

Sokka drove a slash at the diamond blade while he pivoted on one heel, and again Azula sidestepped so that it was now it was _Sokka_ in Suki's way.

"Really," she muttered, "can't you two at least _try_ to act like you know what you're doing?"

Oh, they were certainly energetic enough for a duo, whirling and raining blows down almost at random, while Azula countered, in her gracefully simple way, and outmaneuvered them so thoroughly that it was all she could do to keep from laughing out loud. It was simply a matter of countering their tactics, which were depressingly straightforward: Suki was the quick one, dodging this way and that, trying to get on Azula's opposite border so that they could come at her from both sides—while Sokka came on in a measured cadence, predictable as an arrow's flight, moving step by step, cutting off the angles, clumsy but relentless.

Whereas all Azula had to do was slip from one side to another—and occasionally flip over a head here and there—so that she could fight each of them in turn, rather than both at the same time. She supposed that, in the forests while combating invading bandit groups, they might actually prove reasonably effective; it was clear that their style had been developed by fighting as a team against multiple opponents. They weren't prepared to fight two-on-one, especially not against someone of Azula's caliber.

She, on the other hand, had always preferred to fight alone.

She drew their strikes to her parries, and drove her own ripostes with jeers and taunts that subtly altered the duo's sense of control and pace. Oh, how easy it would be to slaughter them both, even with her bare hands—easier than how she'd already dealt with Uncle. Easier than how she'd slaughtered the entire monastery of Wan Shi Tong.

But the strategist in her forbid it; right now, only _one_ death was on her agenda.

She lunged into a thrust at Suki's ridiculously painted face that the Kyoshi warrior deflected upwards with a rising cross, bringing them breast-to-breast, blades scraping, locked together mere inches from each other's faces. "You're a little slow, old girl. Let's see some more of that gravity-defying agility you used to have!"

Suki's response to this insult was, surprisingly, to say, "Coming right up."

She disappeared upwards so fast that it appeared like she'd vanished. And the space where Suki's body had been was now filled with two hundred pounds of pissed-off Water Tribesman, the grey steel of his blade driving straight for Azula's heart.

Only a reflex-honed spin to the left made what _should_ have been a sucking chest wound into the slice of a single strand of platinum hair.

Azula thought, _Huh. _

That had been pretty close.

But by the time she'd registered how narrow a miss it was, Suki was all over her—blades weaving through an offensive cyclone that Azula didn't even attempt a cut of her own; instead she ducked, dropped low, and spun a reverse ankle-sweep—

But not only did the Kyoshi warrior easily overleap this attack, Azula almost lost her _own_ foot due to a slash from _Sokka_, who had again come out of nowhere and landed a savage kick of his own to the bottom of her chin so hard that her entire body lifted off the ground and flew towards the ceiling.

_This_, she thought as stars blossomed in front of her eyes, _is most definitely NOT part of the plan._

She flipped at the last moment and landed on both feet, but Sokka's following strike downward was so hard that it buckled Azula's elbow. She leapt backwards, trying to get some distance—and Suki's blades were there to meet her neck. Only a desperate whirling slash-block, coupled with a finger jab that caught Suki on her left shoulder's nerve-cluster, bought Azula enough time to retreat the other way—

And Sokka was already there to meet her.

Slamming his broadsword down like he was chopping wood, the first chop slid off of her protective guard. The second bent Azula's wrist. The third forced her own blade so far to inside that the flat of the diamond slapped lightly against her cheek. Where had this _come_ from?

Sokka came on, a machine of battle, impossibly strong, each step a blow and each blow a step. Azula backed away as fast as she dared, but Sokka stayed right on top of her. She no longer tried to meet him strength-to-strength, but instead slanted his blows to the side. His physical strength was _astonishing_…

…and now _Suki_ was entering the fight again on her opposite side, fixing her in the jaws of their trap…

…and through the earth beneath her feet, she could feel TyLee was wheeling herself towards the apartment at a breakneck speed…

…and Azula had to laugh.

It was time to alter tactics.

The Game was reaching its end.

The time had come to kill.

Sokka, apparently, had noticed the change in her demeanor. He refused to say anything, but the increased ferocity of his attacks was sign enough: he didn't want her liking _anything_ that was about to happen.

It didn't work. Azula allowed that spirit of playfulness to bleed into her swordplay, no longer fighting the two, merely fencing with them. "I have to confess, there's a secret that I'm about to reveal. It's kind of funny. I learned it from a very good book."

Twin diagonal slices from Suki missed Azula's back by a distance of hairs. "Do tell!"

"Glad to. The secret is…" And she leaped backwards, completely over Suki's head, bringing her blade down so quickly that she nearly thrust through the woman's left eye socket. When she landed, Azula tossed the hilt of her sword from one hand to the other.

"…I am not left-handed."

And she saw the realization dawn over Suki's face, and oh, it was good. The Kyoshi warrior _knew_ she'd been played.

Azula's left-handed fencer's stance had been a ruse, as had her level of swordplay skill; no matter how hard Suki tried to rain down a flurry of impossibly fast strikes, Azula met every one of them without so much as shuffling her feet, staying perfectly balanced, perfectly centered, blade never moving a hair's width more than necessary, deflecting without effort. When Sokka regained an advantageous position and leapt toward her back, she was already twisting to meet his blade with a playful slap of her own.

And then—as she felt Ty Lee's wheels mere seconds from the front door, and Suki's footwork taking her just out of reach of anyone's blade for the next half-second—Azula's diamond sword flicked out to the left side of Sokka's neck and back again, like the tongue of a chameleon-frog.

His eyes went wide.

His broadsword clattered to the ground

A fine sheet of blood promptly shot out from the center of Sokka's neck, and both of his hands shot up to cover the tiny, millimetric-sized incision that was bleeding his life away between tightly clamped fingers. He gurgled, struggling to speak, but no one could hear him over the sound of Suki's scream ripping apart the night.

The Kyoshi warrior brought both of her swords down with force that went beyond madness, and when both steel blades met Azula's instinctive guard, the crystalline blade shattered like glass, its pieces dissolving into steam.

Azula smiled anyway.

Then she collapsed to the floor, her eyes wide with terror, her mouth wide in a shocked O, and she joined the music of Suki's rage with a terrified, fear-soaked scream of panic…

…just in time for Ty Lee to burst through the door. "_STOP!"_

Azula crawled backwards on hands and knees, tears already brimming over her wide, panicked eyes. Scrambling for distance away from the rage-maddened Kyoshi warrior. "_I told you, Ty Lee! I told you!"_ She pointed a trembling finger at Suki. "What did I say about them coming to _murder_ me? What did I tell you about their true _natures?"_

"Shut it!" Suki's words came like a bark through clenched teeth. For a precious second she glanced back at her husband. A neck injury. Serious. But survivable, if he got to help soon enough. Which wouldn't be happening while Azula was still alive. But Ty Lee was a medic, she could stem the flow for now "Nobody believes you anymore, bitch. It's _over_. You _lost_."

"_I just want to be left alone!"_ Azula wailed.

"Everybody, just stop it!" Ty Lee yelled. "Suki, please, just stop! Azula, don't move, don't do anything! Let me help Sokka before he bleeds out!"

"I'm sure she'll let you," Azula spat. "_She's_ the one who cut his throat!"

"_LIAR!"_ Suki yelled.

"They just ran in here, Ty Lee, started hacking at anything they could, like animals! I ducked, and her blades caught him on the neck—"

Suki's roar was like that of a volcano's eruption. She took two steps forward and kicked Azula's face as hard as possible. The Naked Lady's head rocked back, blood spraying from her nose and mouth, teeth flying and bouncing on the hardwood floor. Her head struck the ground so hard that a concussion was certain.

"_No!_"

Her beautiful face… now it was torn, bloody. Both golden eyes stared up at the ceiling and darted this way and that, unable to focus. Her mouth worked open, lips moving like a doll's, but words would not come out.

Suki flipped both of her swords into a reverse-grip, standing over Azula's body, preparing to stab down. "Save your lies," she hissed. Victory coursed through her bloodstream.

"Suki, you can't do this! This isn't you!" Ty Lee's voice was panicked, hysterical. "You can't just _kill her_, Suki!"

"I can and I will." Her voice was grim, certain, solid as ice. "Help Sokka."

A weak, tiny murmur: "_I…can…I can help…don't kill me…please…"_

"She can heal him!" Ty Lee closed the distance between them and seized Suki's robes with one hand. "She's the Naked Lady, and you've heard the rumors! She's a _healer_, now, I told you that she's changed! She can heal anything! And Sokka's already lost so much blood that I won't be able to—"

"Don't you _see_?" she yelled at her, throwing one sword across the room and ripping away Ty Lee's hand with her own. "Don't you_ see _how she's _manipulating you? _Azula always lies, have you_ forgotten _that_?"_

Ty Lee's face swept itself clean of all emotion. "She's different now…"

"You can explain the difference later."

She raised her remaining blade.

"She's _different_ now!" Ty Lee shouted. "She's forgiven us! She's forgiven _me_!"

Suki didn't care.

Before she could follow through on her downward thrust, a sudden _twang_ sounded throughout the demolished apartment, and a tiny metal spearhead brought itself into her line of sight from directly beneath her chin. It was only after a very long second that Suki realized that this was a crossbow bolt, and it had just ripped into and through her neck.

From behind.

She'd been so focused on the potential threat that was Azula, she'd forgotten all about any potential threats from elsewhere.

And then, _pain_.

Unimaginable pain.

She couldn't breathe. She couldn't speak. Her fingers lost their grip on her sword and the weapon fell down perfectly straight, _thunking_ into the wooden floorboards not a hair's breadth away from Azula's left cheek. Suki turned, tried to see through eyes that were hazing everything a shade of red, tried to find the shooter, tried to find the traitor—

But all she could see was her husband lying on the floor, one bloody hand held out to her. Palm up. Eyes growing dark, but still awake. Still aware.

She collapsed down beside him.

Her hand touched his.

And she continued falling. Straight into the darkness.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Updates now every Friday! Thanks for the reviews!**

* * *

Inside a two-person apartment on Kyoshi Island, the air reeked with the smell of death.

Two corpses, their bodies still warm, their hearts recently stopped, lay by each other. Crimson still trickled from their throats.

Against a far wall, a goddess with snow-white skin lay face up, her head twitching every so often, her lips and tongue clacking against each other, trying to speak words that wouldn't come out.

The only person without injury was a woman sitting in a wheelchair. She was looking at a hand resting in her lap. It had pinkish-tan skin, and thick callouses decorated the palm. Slender fingers were wrapped around the grip of a tiny wooden crossbow.

One of her fingers was still pressed against the trigger.

_What did I just do?_

Did this weapon belong to her? It had to. She had just done something terrible with it—the crossbow was a pen, and she was the author of an atrocity, a terrible act that even now she could not stand to look at.

"What did I just do?"

Slowly, in her peripheral vision, Ty Lee noticed the white goddess slowly sit up from the ground. A shake of the head, to clear away dizziness. But Ty Lee couldn't look away from the weapon.

The weapon.

She remembered, a long time ago, someone had asked her to explain the difference in purpose between a knife and a sword. Both were used to cut, yes, and offered a certain degree of protection against assailants—the only true difference that Ty Lee could find between the two blades was the physical differences in their lengths, their range of attack, the limits imposed on them by size and dimension.

She'd been wrong, of course. Size was a factor of usage, not a difference in purpose. Her inquisitor had given her the true answer: a knife was a tool, whereas a sword was a weapon.

You could use a knife to kill, certainly. You could use _anything_ to kill, be it a bedroom pillow or a hive of wasps. Knives were meant for cutting things, shaping them, separating them—knives had more use as a tool for dinner than a weapon to kill with.

A sword, on the other hand, was a weapon. And a weapon was meant to _kill_. It had no other purpose.

The crossbow in her hand, Ty Lee knew, was a weapon.

And she had just used it.

Effectively.

Azula's hand, warm and soft, laid itself on Ty Lee's, and gently pried the weapon away.

"You saved my life." She was quiet, and soothing, and understanding. "Thank you, Ty Lee. She would have killed me if you hadn't done what you did."

"They tried to murder you," Ty Lee found herself saying. "I thought they would've…I don't know, tried to _arrest_ you , or something…that's what they _always_ do…but you weren't even fighting back…"

"They were warriors. Makers of war. It's not their way to forgive, or forget, or believe that people can change for the better." She placed her hand on Ty Lee's shoulder, who found herself placing her own hand on top of hers, trying to feel more of the warmth, the comfort. "That's another reason why I told only you. _You_ believe that people can change for the better."

Yes. Yes, of course she did.

"You didn't tell anyone else, did you?" The soft understanding in her voice developed a tinge of worry. "Anyone else who could spread my secret?"

"N-no!" She looked away from the weapon and up to Azula. "I only told _Suki_, and she must've told—" She tried to finish the sentence, but her breath hitched, and then she dissolved entirely into maddened crying. "_What in the world is GOING ON?"_

Azula said nothing. She merely knelt close and wrapped her arms around the woman's body, one arm on her back while the other slid underneath her waist, and she picked Ty Lee up bodily without strain or effort, holding her close while the woman sobbed uncontrollably. It would have appeared comical, being carried like an overgrown baby, though there was nothing at all humorous about the situation and no audience to see it.

Horror about what she had done shrank Ty Lee's voice down into a whisper, small and fragile and suddenly very young: "…_I didn't mean to do it…I didn't want any of this to happen…not like this…"_

"Stop, Ty Lee," Azula hushed. "Stop blaming yourself. You couldn't have controlled any of it."

"It's like—it's like—" Tears wouldn't stop coming. "It's like I don't even know who I _am_ anymore…"

"You are the woman who only wants peace and love," she said, but Azula said it with her lips brushing Ty Lee's earlobe. "And I'm the only woman who can make that a reality. We just…have to do things my way, from now on."

"Azula…" Her name was an anguished moan. "…what _will_ you do?"

Azula carried them both from the room where the fight had taken place and moved into the bedroom. There, she laid Ty Lee down on the nearest bed. She combed her fingers through Ty Lee's hair. "I'm going to find the Avatar. And I'm going to make him see that I deserve a second chance. It will take a long time for the rest of the world to really believe it, but all good things come with time."

"What about…what about _them_…?" She waved a hand uselessly towards the other room, indicating the recently fallen.

"I'll…take care of them, Ty Lee. I can't bring them back to life—_no_ _one_ has that kind of power—but I can make it so that no one alive finds out what went on here tonight. Our secret, between us. Just leave it to me."

"You can…really do that?"

"It's not something I'll be proud about. But it will protect you. But before any of that can happen, I need you to tell me something."

"What?"

Azula leaned forward, and for just a moment Ty Lee thought she saw a glimpse of the old, familiar hunger that the Fire Princess displayed whenever she was on the hunt. "Tell me where I can find the Avatar."

Ty Lee didn't respond.

"Do you know where he is?" she pressed. "Do you know where I can find him?"

A wave of tingling started at the base of Ty Lee's skull, and crawled down her back until it disappeared at her waist. "I—I don't really—he'll think I _betrayed_ my friends—"

"Friends?" Azula repeated, a hint of scorn in her voice. "Your _friends_? Tell me, Ty Lee, how many times have your _friends_ come to visit your home? How many times outside of the Kyoshi camp have they talked with you, asked you to join them on an adventure, or a celebration, or a quiet afternoon together in pleasant company?"

Ty Lee could find no answer. Not an honest one.

"I have a feeling it's around the same number of times they visited _me_, when I was locked away on Grey Rock. Out of everyone I ever knew, _you_ were the only one who cared enough to come visit me."

Still, she could not answer.

"I'm not here for vengeance, Ty Lee. I only want to have my name cleared. Otherwise…who knows who they'll send after me next?"

She bit her lip.

"The next one to try might be Mei. Or Zuko."

She could only close her eyes.

"And do you think that will be enough? Do you think that the disappearance of those two assassins out there will make anyone less suspicious of us? Do you think Team Avatar will ever stop until I'm dead? It's them or me, Ty Lee. Or perhaps I should put it more truthfully: it's them or _us_."

"It's just—it's not…easy, that's all. I've been part of them, part of the team, for so _long_…"

"You have my word on this. I will only _talk_ to him. That's all. I will not lay a finger on anyone, and if they try to attack me, I will only retreat as fast as I can."

The crippled, bedridden woman opened her sad eyes and turned her gaze fully upon the bloody features of the Naked Lady. As she looked at her beaten face, she could see the torn lips and gaps from missing teeth. She could see the damage that Azula had taken, and yet not made one single complaint about. She could see that she was still strong, and young, and underneath it all was the same confidence that Ty Lee had always admired.

She weighed her two possible futures beside each other.

She could turn away from Azula, and be left alone forever. Certainly the deaths of the husband and wife in the other room would be placed around her neck.

Or she could help Azula, and be loved. Forgiven. Accepted.

It was no contest.

She said, "The North Pole."

Azula pressed her lips to her cheek. Then stood up.

"Suki told me…she said that he'd been closing down the Air Temples, and by now he should be on his way there. Maybe you can catch up with him in the air."

"I can only hope," Azula said. And meant it. She laid a pale hand on Ty Lee's brow, and slowly covered her eyes. "And now, my secret love, you must sleep. I will take care of everything, and when you wake up, the nightmare will be over. Everything is going to be all right. You'll see."

Power floated through that hand, and Ty Lee felt exhaustion closing down her brain until she couldn't tell if the darkness was from Azula's hand, or her own eyelids.

All she knew was that it had been such a long day. And the bed she was lying in was so _soft_… and Azula, bless her, was happy with her…and she was even smiling as she made her way towards the door.

Yes.

Everything was going to be all right.

* * *

Later—many years later, after decades had grown into centuries, and stories had aged into myth—it would be said that the peoples of the world rejoiced so loudly on the night of the Appearing Goddess that their voices cracked the world.

This is only metaphor, of course. Artistic license. Poetic exaggeration to highlight the significance of the event. Later it would come to be common cliché to describe anything loud and dramatic. Such as, during a particularly loud thunderstorm for example, someone would usually say words along the lines of "Well, the Goddess is Appearin' the hell out of us tonight".

It would also be said, among the more superstitious and fearful folk, that the Goddess' Appearance cracked not only the world, but the heavens above and all levels of hell below, and the roar that greeted her Appearance was not only one of celebration, but from the fear and despair of every living enemy of humanity.

Unlike the proverbial myths and legends, though, this was not only a metaphor. It was mostly true.

The night of the Appearing Goddess was, in fact, a night that filled the air with scores of voices. But it was not the combined voices of humanity—nowhere near that many. In reality, the only voices that were raised that night belonged to the inhabitants of a rather large island off the coast of the Earth Kingdom.

And their voices weren't raised in celebration. Or joy. Or happiness of any kind.

They were screaming.

The truth of the Appearing Goddess is that it is the climax of the Age of the Avatar.

Not the end—the Age of the Avatar will end some few hours from now—but the climax.

It is quite a beautiful climax, in the eyes of its author. Not the culmination of an epic struggle. Just the opposite, in fact: each Kyoshi warrior is trained to fight and die by her sisters. And die they do. Simply. Easily. Like wheat during harvest.

Battlefield training, formations, lines of impregnable armed fighters…they all mean nothing when death comes from the sky, moving as fast as the wind, raining down hailstones the shape of ice daggers, bursts of flame that ignite every patch of forest, forked tongues of lightning that strike every tent. Elemental carnage rips through the entire island.

Orders are shouted. War-challenges are cried. Screams are heard, and sobs, and death rattles. Some citizens—the non-combatants, the children and mothers and elders—try to make a run for it; they are cut down from on high. Some make it to small crafts on the water, only to have their wooden vessels ignite. Those who are desperate enough to swim are boiled alive. Messenger birds carrying emergency notes are shocked from the air, plummeting down to the earth alongside balls of fire and blades of ice.

The sky rains death, and heroes die.

All across the island. All at once.

Heroes die.

* * *

Fifteen hundred feet above the ocean, Vidia stretched back on her portion of the sky bison saddle and wondered, for the third or fourth hundredth time that day, if it was possible to die of boredom.

She decided, as she had all those other times, that if it _were_ possible, then she would've shuffled off this mortal coil at least two days ago. If there was anything in the whole wide world that she hated more than sitting around on Appa's back with nothing to do except listen to adults make small talk, it had to be sitting on Appa's back with nothing to do but listen to her _parents_ make small talk.

Seriously, how many times could they play "What Does This Cloud Look Like?"

Adults were so _boring_!

Well, okay, that wasn't true—Aunt Chief was pretty fun. And so were a bunch of her crazy friends, who thought that staying up all night fighting and drinking each other under the tables was the only proper way to approach bedtime. _Those_ adults were pretty cool, but unfortunately they were the polar opposite of Mommy and Daddy.

Not that she didn't love her parents. They just had the annoying habit of being…what was it that Aunt Chief had called them in whisper one time? Oh yeah, MESFALs: Masters of Every Single Freakin' Aspect of Life. Vidia had known that the joke was just that, a joke—Mommy and Daddy didn't _really_ think they knew everything, though sometimes they sure acted like it, and apparently Vidia herself was guilty of the same crime every now and then—but she was a _kid_, and kids were supposed to think they had everything figured out. Weren't they?

Well, maybe not. She didn't think she was _that_ smart, and there were questions about the world that she still didn't know the answers to. Along with a few questions about herself (like why the heck she wasn't already bending air and water like an Avatar could). But when it came to Mommy and Daddy, oh, she had them _all_ figured out…and maybe that's what brought on a bit of the boredom.

Which was why, when Mommy pointed out a fresh challenge in a cloud that looked all-too-obviously like a cabbage merchant getting attacked by sparrow hawks, it made Vidia's ears perk up when Daddy muttered in a voice filled with tension, "Katara, something's wrong with your brother."

Vidia immediately pretended to be asleep. Closing her eyes and keeping still helped with her hearing.

There was a slight worried pause as Mommy switched from Family Time Mom mode and into Protective Ma Grizzly-Wolf. "_What_?"

Daddy would be giving his little head shake now, one that Vidia knew only came out during really serious moments. It usually said _I don't know how this works or what exactly is going on, but it's serious and I'll have to do something about it._ "It's—a feeling. I think something's happening on Kyoshi island."

"Love, I worry about them too, but—" and this was usually when Mommy put a comforting hand on his shoulder, or around his waist—"they can take care of themselves, you know? Sokka mastered swordplay in _three days_. You're probably just misinterpreting something …"

"It's not that." Daddy sounded certain, _too_ sure of himself. "I think…I think there's something…_wrong_ over there. Something bad."

"Something they can't handle?" Vidia thought she heard Mommy sound a bit hollow, even though she kept being hopeful. "I mean, we're talking about _Kyoshi Island_, here. How much trouble can they get into?"

"I—I don't _know_, love." The twist of uncertainty in his voice brought a similar twist into Vidia's heart. When Daddy crossed the line from nervousness to downright _scared_, things were about to get real. "If I _knew_ what was going on, I wouldn't even have mentioned it, or else we'd probably be turning around already."

Okay, that was it. Pretending to have a backseat nap wasn't worth it anymore. Vidia opened both eyes and sat up, but kept quiet. Mommy glanced back at her, eyes worried, and Vidia gave her a return look that said _I'm a little scared, but okay, it's all right if you're grownups now._ Mommy nodded and went back to business.

"How far are we from the North Pole?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Too far. There aren't even any icebergs underneath us yet."

"Can you make it back to them on just your glider?"

"Bad idea. Even if I try it under perfect conditions, it'll take over a week to get there. And if I hit one storm along the way then the glider'll get shredded." His face hardened, and his brows drew together in an expression Vidia rarely ever saw on him: frustration over not being able to do anything. Daddy could _always_ do something.

"What about the Spirit World?" Mommy asked. "Maybe Avatar Roku knows something."

"Not gonna happen," he muttered.

"Aang—"

He shook his head, sighing. "He…doesn't meet with me, anymore. It's been months since I've seen him. Like he's drifting away, or he's got nothing else to help me with." He paused, and his jaw clenched. "But, he told me once that if I find myself separated from the Avatar's Way, I better believe that it wasn't the Way that moved."

For the longest moment, Mommy didn't say anything. What _could_ she say? Grownups had their own language, and Vidia sure as heck didn't know it, but apparently Mommy didn't have anything to say in _any_ language until Daddy pulled himself out of his problems and dealt with the present.

It didn't take too long. Eventually he sighed, "Well, we can't cover that kind of distance in anything close to fast enough, and we're already more than halfway to the Pole. I'll get us there, drop you guys off, let Appa get some rest, and take off the next morning if I still have a bad feeling about it."

"Sounds like a plan," Mommy said. She moved closer to Daddy and rested her head on his shoulder, but they were still close enough for Vidia to hear her whispered, "You can't keep everyone safe all the time, love."

"No," he agreed. Then he flashed that familiar smile that was both sad and hopeful. "But since when has that stopped me from trying?"

"Daddy, you should relax." Seeing that their decisions were made and the Seriously Important Conversation had gone as far as it could go, Vidia broke her silence. "Remember when Uncle Sokka got drunk off that cactus juice I dared him to drink?"

Aang looked back at his daughter, his smile growing into one of pure happiness flavored with mock seriousness. "Indeed I do, missy. It took three of Suki's finest to get him under control."

"Exactly!" Vidia nodded, like that memory solved all their problems. "And if the Kysohi warriors can take care of Uncle Sokka when he's drunk, they can take care of anything! What's the worst that could happen?"

A bolt of lightning struck Appa directly on the back of his head.

For the longest stretch of time that Vidia had ever experienced in her nearly-nine years, the entire world went blank and silent. It was as if she had turned into a snowflake, so white and quiet…was she dreaming? Had she fallen asleep while _pretending_ to be asleep, and was the whole conversation that had just taken place really part of a dream?

The whiteness began to clear, slowly. Some noise was in her ears as well.

And then both her eyes and ears were doing their jobs properly, and Vidia knew that she _must_ be dreaming, because she could not make any sense at all of what was going on.

First of all, she was flying all by herself, heading straight for the blue ocean right below, and Appa was flying right next to her—but wait, no, he wasn't really flying…his eyes were shut. Squeezed tight. And his mouth was wide open.

Hold on—that roar that she thought was just the wind in her ears…was that the sound of Appa _crying_? And there was a long red streamer flying out from behind him, like he had a cape tied around his neck. It didn't make any sense at all. Appa had always been around for Vidia to play with and Mommy to pester, but they hadn't ever dressed him up with a blood-red cape like that before. How could he be falling right next to her, all six of his legs kicking, bloody cape spraying like a fountain of rubies from a charred hole in the back of his neck and head?

And why was _lightning_ striking him from above, again and again and again?

It didn't make sense. It was wrong, just so wrong, it all was going _wrong_ around her. And where were Mommy and Daddy? So many scary questions. So much wrong. Vidia had only one solution when things got to be this frightening.

She screamed. Closed her eyes, and screamed.

Her scream pounded into her own ringing ears, dulling the roar of the wind and the basso cry of Appa, her little voice sharper and more piercing and more terrifying than a rusted nail being driven into a coffin.

She screamed, and screamed, and knew that she would never stop screaming until she woke up and things made some kind of sense again.

* * *

A last-second windblast pushed his wife and daughter away from Appa's gigantic, lightning-conducting body, and Aang knew that in order to survive, in order for _his family_ to survive, he would have to turn off the part of his brain that cared for his best friend.

That mental switch was thrown without a second thought.

Falling amidst a zero-gravity hailstorm of crates and luggage and droplets of sky bison blood hitting him in the face, Aang looked down to assess just how much time they had before hitting the hard-as-stone ocean surface, just in time to see Appa's body begin to tear apart under dozens of rapid lightning strikes.

Fifteen seconds or so before hitting the water.

Precisely one second later, Appa's body exploded into a starburst of gore and splintered bones.

He couldn't see Katara anywhere.

He could hear Vidia's high-pitched scream of terror. That meant she was _below_.

He could smell charred meat and burnt fur.

Free-falling, arms and legs spread, he did a quick spin to look upward and found the only thing that would ensure one of them would survive: tumbling above his head was the familiar straight line of hickory that was his staff. Aang reached his hand out, the air around himself compressing, slowing down his free fall while he forced the air directly below the staff to become impossibly thin, nearly void.

His staff plummeted down like an arrow freshly released from its bow, and smacked soundly into his palm.

Twelve seconds to impact.

Clutching the staff tightly to his side, Aang spun to plummet face-first towards the water, and a burst of air behind him shot the Avatar straight towards his daughter. His eyes, tearing as the wind scraped against them, nonetheless recognized a streamer of dark hair trailing behind a little girl wrapped in a fetal ball. Though she was tumbling, she was close to aerodynamically neutral, already plummeting at what appeared to be terminal velocity.

Aang shot down, catching up to her. Her eyes were shut tight. Her scream was unbelievable.

Seven seconds.

_Where is my wife?_

With his free hand, he grabbed ahold of Vidia's robes, pulling her close to his side. Her scream stopped the instant his hand touched her—his daughter knew her father's touch. Both eyes squinted open, and though the roaring wind in his ears made her next word impossible to hear, he could read her lips: _"Daddy?"_

"_Hang on!" _he yelled back. She didn't bother with nodding, and simply wrapped both arms around his waist with strength that would have impressed any Earth Rumble champion. Continuing to free-fall, still not opening his glider—the strain of their combined weight mixed with the arrest of their momentum would split the paper and wood into so much kindling—he scanned in all directions for any sign of his wife.

Katara immediately shot past them both in a bonelessly limp plummet.

The too-relaxed lines of her form, the way her arms and legs whipped widely in all directions, completely at the mercy of the wind—_She isn't conscious, not even close_. The thought was founded under instinct more than certain evidence, but nearly twenty years of being by her side had given Aang a profoundly deep, clear understanding of what his wife was capable of. And even with the ocean beneath her, any unconscious fall from a distance higher than most clouds would kill her the same as any non-Waterbender.

Irony. She'd perfected the art of insane-altitude-high-dives during their honeymoon.

Three seconds.

With his daughter still latched on tighter than Momo during a thunderstorm, Aang wrapped wind currents around their bodies like several layers of coats and began to slow their fall. He could stop them both immediately if he wanted, but to arrest their plummet so quickly would risk having Vidia slip off—or, more likely and worse, the gravitational strain could stress her spine and neck badly enough to possibly kill her.

He would have to time this perfectly.

Airbending while Waterbending—whilst keeping free of the Avatar State to boot—was only difficult, not impossible. While one half of his brain devoted itself to slowing them both down, the rest of him reached down into the ocean below and _understood_ it, _knew_ it, as if the water was his daughter and wife and mother and self all mixed into one. For a quarter-mile in all directions the waves shrank down into nothing, the currents went still, and the surface of the water transformed from roiling chaos to calm as a morning pond during winter.

At the perimeter of his decided landing zone, Aang reached his awareness out and began crystalizing the surface of the calm water with nothing but the ice of his will. Many non-Waterbenders thought that the ability to turn water into ice was just part and parcel of the whole Water Tribe culture; that their fluidity and emotional calm was what convinced water to harden itself into solid mass.

That was a common misconception. In the same way that a Firebender could transform flame into electricity, a Waterbender could turn water into ice by utilizing a very secret, very frowned-upon-in-certain-happy-societies portion of their personalities. In a word, coldness.

The only person on the planet that knew just how cold the Avatar's heart could be _was_ the Avatar.

Aang poured it on, reaching deep within himself to the source of cold power inside his heart, sending it out to the ocean surface below. As the power flowed out of him, the water did what it now always did—obeyed his will. Ice formed along the circle's outer perimeter and began crawling inward, becoming the flattest iceberg south of the Arctic circle.

Now for the difficult part.

He didn't make the iceberg completely solid all along the surface. He kept the center wide open, a bulls-eye target for his wife to fall into, and exactly one second before Katara hit the water's surface Aang shot approximately sixty _billion_ tiny bubbles of air into her landing zone. When Katara passed through the meter-wide opening of the ice, the first fifty feet or so of ocean water would be about as hard as a mountain of pillow feathers. The next fifty feet, perhaps mattress quality.

But Aang didn't have time to see how the next fifty feet of her dive after _that_ would go—he and Vidia had less than fifty feet of air to pass through before turning into a bloody smear on the salty ice.

"Glide time!" he yelled, and Vidia, with a practiced motion that spoke of nearly a decade's worth of experience, automatically went from hugging him tightly to letting go, spinning one hundred and eighty degrees in midair, and latching both arms and legs behind onto her father's frame, just in time for Aang to spring the glider's fans open. Their subsonic fall was immediately arrested into a stomach-churning dive that Aang pulled upwards out of.

Vidia's stomach just barely scraped the frosting on the ice.

"You good?" he yelled.

"Good!" she called back. "Where's Mommy?"

"She made it to the water. She'll be coming back up soon—" _Please, please, in the name of all divine spirits, let her come back up—_"so let's get ready to meet her, huh?"

Vidia said nothing, but Aang could feel her nod. She was trembling. Shaken and scared.

"Dad," she said, and her voice shook just as much as her body. "What—where's Appa? Is he all right?"

And just like that, the mental switch that Avatar Aang had thrown in order to help his family survive the next ten seconds…simply turned back on.

And he remembered…

He remembered Appa's wrenching twist in midair, his sudden deceleration of speed, the shock of impact as blue-white electricity clawed its way into his enormous head…electricity that had originally been heading directly for _Aang's_ head…multiple lightning strikes that had blasted the sky bison again and again…

Using his massive body as a shield.

Appa had _known_, somehow.

And without hesitation, he'd given his life.

The grief hit him, punched into his chest, tore at his heart and, for a blind eternity, Aang lost all semblance of control and felt the Avatar State threatening to rise up and take over, something that hadn't happen since Sozin's Comet. The glider immediately stalled in the air, ten feet over the ice, and Aang was so lost that he didn't have the strength or sanity to continue Airbending.

It was only his daughter's startled scream—as she once again plummeted downwards—that brought him a hair's breadth back into sanity.

When the barest tendrils of coherent thought leaked back into his numbed brain, Aang could hear his daughter's voice whispering, "Daddy…your _eyes_…"

He couldn't see. He knew that. It wasn't because he was crying. It was because the State was taking over, and the divine white light was too much for his flesh-and-blood eyes to take…it always happened like this…but he couldn't let it happen _now_…

The Avatar State was the world incarnate. And the world didn't give a damn about the little girl right next to him, or the woman he loved underneath the ice. If the State took over now, there was no telling what it would do—and the possibility of losing the two people Aang loved more than the entire world would be nothing but potential collateral damage to the State.

He had to push it down.

He had to keep his family alive.

He had…to find whoever had cast those lightning bolts.

Grief transformed into anger, fury, blood fever.

_Whack._

A sharp sting from his right hand—Aang stared numbly at it, noticing that it had become a fist, and a thin line of blood was trickling from his knuckles, and only then did he realize that he had just punched the ice beneath him. Pain blossomed like springtime flowers into his brain, brought him back to the world, away from the State.

_Whack_.

He did it again.

"Daddy!"

His bone density was pretty good; one did not become a master of Earthbending without a couple thousand punches delivered into the sides of oncoming boulders. His knuckles did not break. The flesh peeled back over them, exposing red-streaked ivory like bones hidden inside raw meat.

"What are you _doing_?" Vidia asked him. She sounded very far away. "Why are you _doing_ that?"

Above, the heavens thundered.

He turned his eyes towards the noise, up towards the clouds. Up to where the attack had come from. Up to where the attacker still waited.

Waited for him.

A pale, nude female form. Silver hair fluttering in the wind like a silken cape. Her skin glowed an otherworldly blue, as if her body were charged with the lightning that spat and crackled from her blazing eyes. Eyes that refused to blink as they stared back at him.

He remembered those eyes. They were different, now—but they still held the same exact malice as before.

"Vidia," he hissed through a clenched jaw. "Vidia…stay down. Keep as small as possible."

"What are you talking about?" she asked. "What is that? Is Mommy okay? How did—"

He silenced her with an open palm. Both eyes stayed locked upwards, never deviating so much as a millimeter away from his enemy. He wanted to comfort his daughter, and crack open the ice below to search for his wife—_why hadn't Katara resurfaced yet?_—but all he could do was watch and wait for her to make the next move.

And pray that he could survive it.

* * *

There was a very old, very bad joke about two young Air Nomads who were just learning how to fly their gliders. One of them looked to the other one and said, "Wow, those people down there are so far away, they look just like ants." Whereupon the other would look at the first and say, "Wow, you're pretty stupid—those _are_ ants. You haven't even left the ground yet."

Azula had never been much for comedy (in this life or any other) but she found herself reminiscing about that old joke as she gazed down at the Avatar and his whelp. Such…_insects_ they were. Even the mighty Avatar was nothing much more than a middle-aged man approaching his autumn years, tiny and leaning on his staff like a walking cane.

But of course, his physical presence was an illusion—the body was only a vessel. The truth of him could be seen in his aura: Avatar Aang was a fountain of multi-colored light so intense that it brought back memories of her time in the cave with Wan Shi Tong and his rainbow hell.

"I have to say," she called down to him, her voice smug and satisfied at their current appropriate positions, "that a man like you could've done so much better than marrying _her_. You know, as a widower, you'll be single again and free to chase a _lot_ of tail."

The Avatar said nothing. His little girl followed his lead, though hers was a decision founded more upon fear than stoic heroism. Hmm. Fear was good. It was the foundation of real respect.

Fire Lord Ozai had taught her that.

"And just think," she continued. "With the missus out of the way you can start repopulating the world with Air Nomads the old fashioned way, by having lots and lots of little bastards running around."

"You can't get rid of her that easily," he said. "Trust me. Plenty of others have tried."

"Or you, apparently. But I have a feeling that's about to change." She floated down until her feet touched the icy surface. "And don't worry about the child. I won't kill her. She'll live not-so-happily ever after with me, when all this is said and done. I'll keep her like a souvenir. Something to remember you both by."

Avatar Aang stood up as straight and centered as the oldest mountains. He said nothing. His eyes glowed white. His arms raised themselves up in a balanced, steady defensive posture.

Azula responded by spreading her arms out wide, her fingers aimed towards him, the smile on her full red lips cruel and malicious.

Lightning speared forth, and when the electric currents reached the Avatar, it was more than just Aang against Azula. More than the Last Airbender against the Naked Lady. They knew that this was bigger than Avatar versus Anti-Avatar, or tyrant against ruler—this was an expression of the fundamental conflict found in every living thing in the universe.

This was light against dark.

And it was winner take all.


	7. Chapter 7

Their battle was not even remotely, for lack of a better word, "personal".

It was natural.

When lightning shot forth from the will and hands of the Naked Lady, it was not Azula burning Aang with the cold-blooded fire of her hate, or the Fire Princess scorching the Last Airbender, or the new deity going up against the old one. It was the Goddess of Humanity pile driving electricity into the Avatar of the Earth.

The ghosts of thousands of past tyrants celebrated in her victory.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the age of the Avatar is _done_!" she announced. "It's time for the people of this world to have something _better_!"

And it was the whole lineage of the Avatars that bent the lightning back towards her, making of his own body a rod which to return the attack at her. She caught the electricity tendrils with open arms, skidding back with the impact across the ice, but otherwise showed no sign of discomfort.

"They'll get something better, all right," he spat. "But it won't be coming from you."

"Ah, but how do you _know_?" she asked, one eyebrow raised, her tone purely quizzical. She relaxed from her attack posture and put both hands on her hips, careless. "For certain, I mean. How do you know that I haven't changed, and all I want is to help everyone? Surely you've heard the rumors by now about me?"

"The Naked Lady who heals children. Right." Aang didn't adjust his body stance in the slightest. "Maybe you want to help sick kids. Maybe not. But you just killed someone I love—"

Here the grief of Appa's sudden death tore at him again, but he pushed it aside.

"I'm not going to let that go."

The Naked Lady laughed at that, a childish giggle like Aang had just shared a juicy piece of gossip to a school friend. "I _know_," she laughed. "I know _exactly_ what you mean by that."

"You couldn't possibly. But I appreciate the attempt at trying to derail me."

"Oh, but it's _true_, dear Avatar." She gestured with a moonlight-glowing hand at herself. "I've done a lot of traveling while I was gone, and as you can see it changed me. Right before I arrived home I had decided to turn over a new leaf. Help others. Do good. Ease the pain of those who were suffering—in essence, do the job that _you've_ been neglecting—and I had planned for my actions to be the proof that I'd switched over to your side."

Aang said nothing. Some detached part of his mind began connecting dots.

"And then," she continued, "right before my return, I learned something new. I learned _how_ we are all connected in this realm, connected through the energy of our bonds. I confess, there was only one bond that I had any interest in returning to."

"Ozai," he said. The word came out like a foul curse.

"My father," she nodded. "A prisoner to my brother. A fugitive to the world. And the only person I ever truly felt any real connection with."

Aang knew where this was going.

Azula could read it in his eyes, and nodded. "Yes, Airbender. _Yes_, my Avatar. I discovered that he had been killed."

"And so you snapped," he finished for her. "Your mental stability hasn't ever been much of a strong point for you."

"On the contrary, my mental stability is—well, rather _was_, before I hacked away at it—quite normal. For example, it's been said that a person can spend twenty years building their adult life, and it only takes twenty seconds of war for that life to be utterly destroyed."

She spread her hands wide, as if to say _voila!_

"Did you really think I wouldn't take revenge for his murder?"

"Then your fight is with _Zuko_," Aang stressed. "And the last time I checked, The Fire Nation is a very long way from here."

"Oh, I'll get to big brother soon enough," she sighed, flipping an irreverent hand. "He's last on my list. Before him, though, I need to settle things with the remainders of Team Avatar. You are, after all, the only people left in this world that actually have the abilities to make my life more troublesome than it has to be."

That didn't call for a response. Aang didn't give one.

"So," Azula sighed, stretching like she'd just woken up from a long nap, "I'm going to give you an offer. An offer that I _know_ you'll refuse, but in the spirit of fair play I'll give it anyway: Retire. Run away. Hide. Find some quiet cave to sit in and meditate for the next few decades. I'll take it from here."

"Sorry," he answered. "Tried that a few times, but the wife wouldn't let me. You know how persuasive she can be."

The Naked Lady smiled, and her fingertips crackled with power. "Oh, that's okay."

She raised one glowing fist upwards to the sky, and lightning screamed down from the heavens to strike directly in the center of the floating iceberg, through the meter-wide hole that Aang had left for his wife to fall through. The purple-blue arcs of electricity caused the water to froth and boil like a pot on the stove, sending the electrical current deep into the water to shock every living fish and shark and swimmer, and then just as quickly the lightning was gone and the world was silent. A deafening silence.

"If the fall didn't kill her," Azula shrugged, a cruel smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, "then _that_ certainly did the job."

And the Avatar—and all the Avatars before him—decided that there wasn't one single reason left as to why this monster should be allowed to walk his earth. He inhaled, and the clouds gathered overhead, spitting lightning. He bared his teeth like a pantherwolf, and the ice trembled like an earthquake. He made a fist, and from the ice shot tendrils of water that instantly curled around the Naked Lady and braided themselves into an impossibly complex knotwork cage that immediately hardened into ice.

"Don't try to fight me, Azula," he said. "This is your last warning. Give up, or I'll do to you what I did to your father."

The Naked Lady rolled her eyes. "_Bad_ idea, bringing him up."

And without so much as a strain of effort, she broke free of the ice and shot straight upward into the air…and _kept going_.

Straight up. No Airbender's glider, no assistance from a sky bison, nothing.

Flying upwards until she could no longer be seen by Aang's naked eyes, the Avatar was forced to break away from scanning the clouds to turn back towards his daughter. "You okay?"

Vidia, shivering beside him with what he knew wasn't the cold, nonetheless nodded. "Where's Mommy?"

"She's in the water, so she'll be okay," he said. "Wait right here for her. Don't do anything, don't go anywhere, just stay right here until she comes back up. Then you and her both take off from here as fast as you can go, understand me?"

Vidia nodded, her blue eyes wide and frightened, but she immediately tore her attention away from the clouds and started looking at the surface of the water, searching for her mother. "Who was that?"

"Someone bad."

"What's she doing?"

"Some_thing_ bad."

"Where did she go? Did she run away because you're the Avatar, and she knows she can't beat you?"

"I'm not sure. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's not the case at all. That's why it's bad." He sacrificed a crucial moment to look his daughter in the eyes. "I love you. Now get ready to move."

"I don't want to leave you, Daddy" she said. "Not until I know Mommy's okay."

"You're welcome to find her," he said, his voice breaking at the end into a slightly-scared laugh. Then he extended his arms, and the ice beneath his feet began crawling upwards, slithering across his body like watery snakes, over limbs and chest, encasing his head, developing grooves and jointed connections until he was entirely covered in ice-armor. "Meanwhile, Daddy's got to go to work."

And The Naked Lady plummeted from the clouds to appear right in front of him.

She brought down a rain of hellfire, and brutally intense flame poured down onto the Avatar. Vidia barely managed to shield her eyes from the intensity of the blast and peered out from between her fingers: apparently her dad's armor was doing the trick, because he didn't seem to even notice the heat and was raising a fist as though delivering a punch to an invisible opponent, even though the Naked Lady was fifty feet away and hovering over the water.

A pair of tidal waves crashed into her from both sides, freezing into spike-shaped ice before impact.

And Mommy was still nowhere to be seen.

* * *

Katara was dead.

She had to be. Because she was floating, and underwater, and she had no need to breathe at all, and even though Waterbenders were pretty good at accomplishing miracles, they weren't _that_ good—a Waterbender couldn't breathe the ocean, after all.

She tasted salt on her tongue. There was coolness all around her. And it was so dark that she didn't know if her eyes were opened or closed.

More importantly, it didn't matter.

She knew that she was dead, either way.

Unconsciousness—or the near-eternal state that a concussion/near-death experience brought on—had coalesced the situation into one long, ever-eternal _now_ in which the South Pole Water Tribe Waterbender had plenty of time to look at her situation, examine it, turn it this way and that, disassemble it and then reassemble it, and still realize that there was no possible way for her, her husband, and her daughter to get out of this situation alive.

Fact: Azula was back. Katara had gotten a pretty good look right before the first lightning bolt had struck Appa in the base of his crown, and if there was one bitch in the world that Katara could remember it was the Fire Princess and the way her eyes lit up with cruel, merciless flame when she was exalting in victory.

Fact: Azula was back from the dead and she was unbelievably powerful, possessing skills that were not only impossible for a Firebender, but rivaled that of the Avatar himself. Even Aang couldn't fly through the air without the aid of Appa or his glider—but Azula had been hovering above completely unassisted, lightning bursting forth from both hands, as if she'd been born with the ability.

Fact: Katara couldn't move. Though she was conscious, and could process coherent thought, and even felt the far-off ghost that was her motherly emotional urgency to _protect your family, dammit!_, Katara could no more move her body than a Waterbender could manipulate sand. All she could do was feel the bubbles float past her skin and the pressure of the depths increase as her body sank lower and lower into the deep.

Fact: No matter what she did, she was dead.

For some reason, that last realization did not bother her. Not in the slightest.

It was strange, how death could make one aware of true priorities. Though it was pretty bad that she was dying courtesy of a sucker-punch ambush from an enemy she'd long thought dead, Katara found herself a tiny bit relieved that she didn't have to die the same way Gran-Gran had gone: asleep in bed, a decrepit old woman whose body was had been failing for years and death was a welcome turn of the page. Better to die on the battlefield, even a _surprise_ battlefield, than to spend the last years of one's life just waiting for death to arrive.

Alone, in the pureness of factual intelligence, Katara of the South Pole Water Tribe was ready to die.

Until she remembered that her husband and daughter would be dying as well.

Without her help.

A tiny bit of motherly instinct began to leak into her thoughts. A few droplets, leaking through the dam of logic and reason: _Fight back. Protect family. Let them live on, so it doesn't matter if you do._

That same logic and reasoning reminded her that there _was_ no way to fight back. The electric lightning-shock from the sky, as well as her incredibly hard fall into the sea, had broken her body so badly that she couldn't move it, couldn't control it, and by extension couldn't control the water around her. Waterbending required precise movements. She had none to give.

It was this information that allowed Katara a surprising amount of permission to attempt the impossible.

When all roads lead to death, the impossible one might as well be taken, after all.

Sinking herself deep into the mindset of Waterbending, Katara made of her will a long, thin, tentacle that slithered deep into the ocean depths below. Forget the world above—for now, in this eternal moment of near-death, she was content with experimentation. She'd always wanted to try something of this caliber, after all; the only thing that had kept her from doing it prior had been the insanely dangerous risk of it.

Water Tribe members had a divinely intimate relationship with the ocean. She was, after all, the source of their unique difference from the rest of the world; a reminder of their power, but a continuous threat to their livelihood nonetheless. The earth was predictably slow and hard, and fire was an animal that could only be tamed and bent to one's will—but water? The ocean, the only way to control her was through seduction.

And Spirits help the fool who tried it.

Katara let the tendril of her will sink down, down, down into the black depths. She felt the energies of myriad sea creatures brushing past, going about their simple lives. She felt the intense cold and unbelievable pressures of the oceanic depths—strength and power of a type that only Earthbenders could truly appreciate—just as she felt the ripples at the ocean's surface that were the result of Aang having a pre-battle conversation with the Naked Lady.

(The part of her will that was distinctly Katara resolved that, if she did survive this through some miracle, she would shove her foot so far up the Fire Princess's ass that blood would come out of both nostrils)

But above all that—or rather, _below_, the same way that the ocean flowed beneath the waves—she felt something that she had never intellectually been prepared to find: will.

Inside the ocean, _part of_ the ocean, there was a will that dwarfed the strength of her own the way the moon dwarfed a pebble. In the same way that her own willpower, her skill, her level of mastery of the waves was equal to that of Waterbenders long dead…compared to the will that she discovered in the ocean depths, her own strength was a raindrop in falling next to a waterfall.

_No_, she thought. _A poor comparison. My will is like a whistled song. This will—HER will—is like a symphony orchestra._

Katara knew who's will she was pressing herself up against.

The Water Tribe had named it _Umi_, long ago.

Katara had found the energy flow of The Great Spirit Of The Ocean—and the staggering power of its music threatened to boil her brain inside her skull. Notes slid against notes, bubbling upwards like an indrawn breath from a singer who suddenly finds she has an audience…and the music of Umi's song immediately became charged with comprehensible _meaning_.

Not words. More like a simple wave hello.

_**I HOLD YOU, DAUGHTER KATARA, AND YOU ARE WELCOME IN MY ARMS.**_

Pure understanding flowed into Katara's mind, and though she had neither breath to spare nor ability to talk, her response became a melody itself and was sung back: _You are Umi…_

_**THUS AM I CALLED BY YOUR KIND. JOIN YOUR HEART WITH MINE, DAUGHTER, SO THAT WE MAY BE ONE AGAIN.**_

And song poured out of Katara's soul, effortlessly joining with the symphony of the Great Spirit's orchestra. Here there was no polite manners, no hiding of opinions or shading of the truth—everything Katara was became part of Umi, and the Great Spirit took it all in: her strengths and weaknesses, all her points of pride and memories of those she loved, the shameful tangle of her lusts, her pettiness, jealousy from having a husband who is also married to the entire free world, and the Secret about their daughter that she could never tell him—

Umi took it all in the way a lake absorbs a thrown rock.

There was no judgment—_could_ be no judgment—because they were both one and the same.

In the Great Song, the music that was Katara sang of her desperation, the emergency that had driven her to sink so deep and dive so far. She asked, _Please, Mother, you have immeasurable strength. Show my enemy your power, and save my daughter._

_**I CANNOT. I WILL NOT. THE LAWS LAID DOWN BY THE AVATAR OF THE WORLD APPLY TO ME AS WELL—NO SPIRIT MAY ENTER INTO THE AFFAIRS OF HUMANITY. AND THE CYCLE CAN ONLY CONTINUE. NOT EVEN I CAN STOP IT.**_

Katara understood with more than perfect clarity. She saw/felt/understood Umi's point of view; the Ocean Spirit was completely unconcerned for the individual lives of Katara's family. To the Ocean, there wasn't the slightest difference between the life of little Vidia and the life of a newly spawned plankton. Umi did not understand why humans feared death, something natural and part of the endless cycle—why should they resist the end, when it was right where they had come from in the first place?

Still, Katara pressed on. _Grant me a small token of your strength, then. Make of my body a sacrifice, and allow me to be your priestess—I shall be your voice, your hand, your will made flesh. I shall teach this false spirit to respect the divine nature of all Great Ones._

_**A SACRIFICE IS NOT REQUIRED. I NEED NO VOICE. RESPECT IS NOT REAL. MY WILL IS DONE REGARDLESS.**_

Another denial.

Katara felt notes of desperation and fear creeping into her song, threatening to destroy the harmony…and split their wills apart once more.

_How can I help them?_ she begged. _Please. Tell me. How do I protect those that I love?_

_**YOU SAY THAT AS IF WE WERE NOT ONE WITH EACH OTHER.**_

Thousands of feet below the surface of the ocean, Katara's heart skipped a beat.

The Ocean Spirit sang, _**A WARRIOR DOES NOT ASK FOR HER HAND TO BECOME A FIST.**_

And she _knew_. Knew exactly what Umi was trying to say. They were one with each other—asking Umi for help was like asking her own hand to curl its fingers into a fist. It had only been the vagaries of perception from her human brain that had created this separation between them.

Right now, her desire was one with Umi's.

Katara of the Southern Water Tribe was one with The Great Spirit of the Ocean.

So, with the knowledge of this realization burning freshly inside her mind, it was only Katara's personal sense of style that brought her eyes to open and a smile to come to her lips, bubbling forth a single word right before shooting towards the surface:

"_**Rise."**_

* * *

Inevitably, as in all battles, there came a point in which the tides turned.

It did not come from a plume of fire or the slash of a lightning bolt (though there were plenty of those flying around); it did not come from a flying kick or a surgically precise punch (though they were both traded as well).

It came as the battle shifted from the flat iceberg and onto the surface of the ocean herself; it came as their footsteps touched down onto water which swelled and boiled into cresting platforms easily twenty feet tall, shooting the participants into the air for flips and twists and dodges of oncoming attacks; it came as Waterbending transformed the infinite expanse of ocean into an inexhaustible ammunition supply, making the waves into sledgehammers, battering rams, catapault stones that crashed against each other so loudly that their crumbling and splashes were reminiscent of applause.

It came when the spirit of the Earth resolved itself into the lineage of the Avatars; when the lineage of the Avatars refined into one single Avatar.

It came when Aang found himself alone in battle against Azula.

In the lightning-filled tornado of fists and feet and flame, Aang's vision finally saw through the deception of his opponent—a deception that he himself had helped create. Finally, he saw the truth. This truth:

The truth that he, Aang, the Avatar, the Last Airbender, supreme master of all four elements, the cleverest, the strongest, the most devastatingly powerful enemy that chaos had ever known…

Just—

Didn't—

_Have_ it_._

He'd never had it. He'd lost this battle before he'd gotten started.

He had lost this battle the moment Azula escaped her prison.

Because Azula had changed. She had grown, had adapted, had invested over a decade's worth of intensive study into every aspect of not just the bending of elements, but of the Avatar himself, in preparation for _exactly_ this day.

Azula hadn't just become stronger. She'd become _new_. She'd reinvented herself.

While Team Avatar—

He and his friends had spent the same amount of time training to re-fight the _last_ battle.

_Hmm,_ Aang thought. _This could be a problem._

He could feel his strength draining out of him as the seconds stretched into minutes. Bending her lightning away was getting more and more difficult, and his body hadn't had to perform acrobatics like this in _years_, since before Vidia had been born. But Azula was showing no signs of tiring at all—and it wasn't just courtesy of her youthful body.

The crazy girl was _giggling_ while they fought, as if this were nothing more than a schoolyard game.

The Naked Lady shot a long tendril of red flame—_why wasn't her fire blue anymore?—_towards his face, then spun blindly to leap towards a pillar of ice that was shooting up from the water's surface.

Aang blocked the fire with one palm and leapt to follow her—

But was half a second too slow.

The Lady unleashed her lightning while the Avatar was still in midair, and the last Airbender took its power directly. The shock blasted him backwards to crash land, skidding across the ice towards the feet of a tiny little girl.

"_Daddy!"_

"Perfect."

A second lightning bolt blasted the two of them away from each other—an unconscious Vidia went skidding across the flat iceberg in a bonelessly limp slide, while Aang was blown up into the air, catching a _third_ lightning bolt that tossed him, spinning end over end, into the ocean's waiting depths.

The Naked Lady didn't let him flounder for very long.

Switching to Waterbending, Azula pulled both arms towards herself and felt the ocean respond: a small undertow brought the Avatar to the surface, and a frigid wave tossed him back onto the platform of ice to slide to the toes of her bare feet.

Azula knelt down, wrapped one slender hand around his throat, and raised the Aang up into the air.

"Would you look at that," she purred. "Turns out, the good guys can _lose_ once in a while."

Aang—shocked senseless, half-drowned, gasping for breath while the tiny hand squeezed his windpipe shut—brought both hands up to wrap around Azula's wrist, trying to pry himself free.

"You're not going to die here," she hissed into his ear. "I'm not going to spend the next decade searching for the newest Avatar. I need you to be _alive_."

Lightning coursed out of her skin like an electric eel, and once again Aang found himself teetering on the edge of consciousness. Azula's hand opened, and his body fell to the ground, still twitching.

"But I can't have any would-be family members trying to come to your rescue and all that." She stepped away from his immobile form and began walking towards Vidia. "Already took care of the wife. And the in-laws. And plenty of old friends. Now all I have to do is get rid of the daughter…"

A shadow suddenly darkened the world. Azula stopped in her tracks.

For one still instant the entire world around him was filled with shadow. The heat of the sun above vanished, and there was no golden light on the ice—instead, everything was painted in a moving collage of twisting green and turquoise, like the sun seen on the bottom of a rippling pool of clear water.

Aang couldn't understand what kind of cloud could cast such a shade, and he looked up—

And saw the ocean. Above his head.

In the shape of his wife's body.

A giantess, a titan of old myth, rising from the oceanic depths like a leviathan. The voice that she spoke through sounded like the chirps from dolphin-sharks, crackling ice, splashing water and rain storms—the very Voice of the ocean itself.

And his wife was speaking through it.

"_**Get away from her, you BITCH."**_


	8. Chapter 8

The Water Tribeswoman that had been given the name of Katara was standing atop an altar constructed of a waterspout.

One hundred feet in the air. Perfectly centered. Perfectly balanced. And every single droplet of water, every creature in the ocean, every atom of ocean-scented mist in the air was subject to her beck and call. Gone was any hint of motherly kindness on Katara's features, replaced by protective animal rage that boiled just below her simmering surface. Both eyes blazed like an aquamarine furnace, and the temperature in the air dropped so quickly that a fresh layer of frost began to form on the surface of Aang's giant flat iceberg.

The entire iceberg… _iced over._

And the Naked Lady was not the slightest bit afraid.

She looked upward, shading her eyes against what was left of the midday sun, and she smiled the smile of a spoiled princess on her birthday. There was a deep, hungry anticipation in her voice when she said, "Umi, I'm guessing? I was under the impression that the Great Spirits didn't interfere with the lives of man."

The voice that answered her was shaped from storm gales, from cracking waves and waterspout winds.

"_**You are mistaken, little godling. Stand away from the child and the Avatar, for they are ours, and they are precious to us."**_

"You'd rather that I danced with _you_?" The Naked Lady's reply was audible silk. "Well. If you insist." She stepped back from where the child and man lay helpless on their sides, dusting her hands as if finishing the first part of a difficult task. "I've been waiting for the other Spirits to come and stand against me. I'd been hoping for someone of more…_strength_…than just the ocean. But you'll do, I suppose."

She looked back up at the Priestess of the Ocean, and winked.

Katara raised an eyebrow upward.

The new frost that was coating the ice around Azula's feet writhed to life, snaking crystalline tentacles around her, pinning her arms to her sides, wrapping her neck, binding and hardening into a cocoon that covered her entire body, leaving only her head and neck exposed. For a moment, the young goddess tested her purely physical strength against them. The glacial prison creaked, but did not crack.

She looked up at the Spirit above, and her smile widened.

She rolled her head around her neck, and thunder rolled.

She laughed, and the sun dimmed.

Azula raised her head to the sky, and lightning speared down from the clouds, crackling energy that enveloped her; flames exploded from her body, igniting the air around her, charring her prison into super-pressurized steam in the blink of an eye. There was no thunderclap.

Soon, there was only Azula, standing triumphant in the flames that writhed over her nakedness like coiling snakes.

She raised an eyebrow of her own, and the fire around her body struck outward. A blast furnace ignited the air with a shattering roar, a shaft of power that hit the Avatar's wife full on the breast—who opened her arms to receive it as a flower opens the petals to the dawn.

Red fire struck her water, and it rolled off like waves on a beach.

A pulsing crystalline mountain rose from behind the Waterbender, blocking half of the sky, emerald with surface algae and sparkling with the silver-mailed flicker of darting fish. The ocean itself spilled upwards against all reason, shaping itself higher and higher into a globe the size of a castle, an iceberg, an island. Then the globe unfolded like a starfish—

And became a hand.

The Hand of Umi descended upon the ice. And neither Azula nor Aang could look away.

He thought, _What has my wife become, that she can do these things?_

The hand was ten times the size of the iceberg that he lay upon, and it closed upon them all. The flames from Azula's skin boiled only for a second, making tiny bubbles, and for a long moment Aang found himself underwater, face-to-face with an equally astonished sea bass.

Then the watery universe left, spitting him tumbling onto the floating ice raft, with the water that Katara had soaked him with now beginning to heal and repair his electricity-shocked body.

His mind raced. _She said that she wouldn't kill me_, he thought. _If I die here, she'll have to deal with finding the next Avatar all over again. As long as I'm alive, there's a way to beat her._

Then his eyes went back to Vidia's unconscious form.

_For you, little girl. Daddy's gonna make it better._

But a hard reminder made itself known: should he allow the State to take over, and if Azula _did_ manage to kill him, then the Avatar line would end with him. No hope for the future. Also, as long as Vidia was nearby, she could easily be killed if the State took control. She was even more vulnerable, now—when Aang had been twelve, Azula's lightning bolt had knocked him into a coma. Vidia was only nine, and had never experienced any kind of violence like this before.

He'd make sure that she would never have to again. And he'd do it the hard way. To protect her.

He rested his head on the ice and concentrated, speeding up the healing process. Before he could help his daughter, Aang knew that his wife needed it more.

Because he didn't know _what_ he'd do if he was too late.

* * *

In the sky above, two goddesses met in battle.

High, already so high above that they mingled with clouds, a watery hand swirled Azula inside the clench of a liquid fist. She was spun around and around, caught in Katara's vortex, unable to breathe or see or focus on any target.

Sudden steam burst into a boiling tornado around the Naked Lady as she spreads arms wide, and within the air that those bubbles formed she began to burn. The heat of her body boiled the water around her, sending clouds of white upward to meet the rolling grey above.

Truthfully, the water of the ocean discomforted Azula only in the way that it interfered with her aim. Within the swirling vortex of superheated steam, she called upon the loving energy of her Children and stretched forth one hand: lightning once again danced to her gesture.

A holocaust of lightning and fire together struck the small part of the Great Spirit that was the body of Katara, and passed through that body as if it were a lens, striking outward at the life-energy of the Ocean Spirit herself…and harmed Umi not in the slightest. Fish died, coral withered, seal-otters and their families choked and died in the boils, and scalded water serpents drifted limp in the currents of the world's seas. In all, the extreme violence of the Naked Lady could no more hurt the Ocean Spirit than an oversized underwater volcanic eruption.

Katara danced her soul into intention, and Umi struck back. Not with ice, not with water, but with the power of life that the ocean gave and took:

Salt boils festered immediately upon Azula's perfect skin. Algaes flushed and filled her lungs with slime. Lice ate away her flesh, her hair, her eyes. The tiny symbiotic amoebas and bacteria that still lived deep within her intestines suddenly grew and grew, swelling her belly, and would certainly have burst the young goddess from inside out—

But Azula, like Katara, was not powered just by her own life energy.

The strong loving life-force that she drew from her Children, from all the lives she had saved, kissed, held—they all burned within her, providing power and energy to do whatever she needed to do. In the space of an unneeded breath her intestines, her skin, her lungs, her blood, were all as sterile as a blade pulled fresh from the forge.

As the two goddesses struck against each other, they conversed. Azula's was the voice of thousands, from the cries of newborn babies to the whimpering rattle of dying old crones.

_Why not go kill my Lovers? You know that to do so will weaken my strength. Send a tsunami. Flood their homes. Drown their loved ones. Is this not what you do to them, anyway?_

The answer came in the roar of a waterfall, the trumpeting of seashore birds, the ice crack of a shifting glacier. "_**You are the monster. Not them. The innocent have done nothing to upset this world's balance—the only one deserving of death is you."**_

And Azula understood.

Her enemy was not an Ocean Spirit. Her enemy was a woman given weapons _by_ the Spirit, armored by the Spirit, given strength and power from the Spirit. But it was the _woman_ that used those gifts. It was the mother that danced and guided the Spirit according to her will, not the other way around. Concerns that might have been mere dust motes to the ocean might weigh heavy indeed on the heart of the person through which its power flowed.

Azula didn't have to defeat Umi. She only had to beat a Waterbender.

The same Waterbender that she'd been fantasizing about killing for a life-age of the world.

Azula spread wide her pearlescent arms and poured energy out towards the Waterbender's body; not fire, nor lightning, but _energy_. Pure energy, raw life-force that she drew from the lives of her Loving Children, focused and sluiced into the goddess with a dam no longer able to control the volume.

Katara accepted it all. The love passed into her and through her as before, and as it came, she felt within it the source from which it sprang: she felt the lives of the Lovers of the Lady, one by one, wink out like fireflies in the frost.

And within the Spirit, Katara's heart broke.

Umi was a Geat Spirit, able to know and learn things that no mortal had ways of knowing. As the life-forces of Azula's followers blasted into her and through her, the Waterbender _knew_ the young boys, the little girls, the innocent children whose lives were erased by its drawing, knew each and every one of them as a mother knows the lives she brings forth from her body. Each death lashed her with the world-ending grief of a mother who watched her children drown, one by one by one.

Perhaps if their deaths had come in a massive wave, she could have borne the weight. A single shattering extinction could have blended these people together into some huge and abstract mass, a statistic; but instead, she knew the individual tragedy of each and every one.

Her soul sagged beneath the burden of clasped and loving hands, and sudden weepings, and despairing last glances exchanged through closing eyes.

What had kept Katara from returning to her frozen homeland in the southern Arctic Circle was devotion to innocent lives. The inmost core of her being was the defense of innocence. To withstand this grief required that she become someone other than Katara.

But even the divine power of an Ocean Spirit could not carry away the pain.

Though she knew it would cost her life, and Aang's, and probably even her daughter's, she could not allow this distant and passionless slaughter to continue; their three lives for dozens, _hundreds_? Numbers of people who were—involuntarily—as close to her as family now, who were an unwilling part of her own _heart_? It was a bargain she had no choice but to make.

The three of them—silly Katara, wonderful Aang, beautiful Vidia—had grown into the tightest of families together. They could pass out of this world together, and into the next. And the Avatar Spirit would leave her husband, and move on to the next unlucky chosen one. The _next_ Avatar could stop Azula, rescue the innocents, save the world.

Slowly, with agonizing regret, she ceased her dance within Umi's music.

Her enemy must have sensed a change within Katara, and the Naked Lady's attack dwindled as the water of the ocean fell once more from the sky, this time as thick rain.

When the two landed, they faced each other across a long stretch of wet iceberg.

"You win," Katara said simply, hands at her side. "I surrender. Just stop."

Azula shot forward with the speed of lightning and seized her, holding Katara by the neck, limp and unresisting in the clench of one tiny pearl hand. She looked up at Katara with imperial disdain.

"Compassion for life is an admirable virtue, in women," she said in tones almost kindly. Then her voice sharpened with contempt. "In a goddess, it is a _sin_."

Katara made no answer.

"Do you remember when you interfered with the Agni Kai between me and my brother? You shouldn't have done that. We had honorable duel, he and I, and you turned it into a squabble between siblings. That was your first mistake. Your biggest mistake came when you decided not to kill me when you had the chance."

She drew Katara close, and whispered into her ear.

"It is amazing what you can learn from the mistakes of others. I will not be making yours."

_Oh, Aang._

"You fought well. That's worth a quick death."

_I'm so sorry._

And Katara—

As she looked away from her murderer and into the eyes of her husband weakly rising from the ice, Katara knew that she had been delaying the inevitable. Her whole life—all her victories, all her struggles, all her principles and adventures, everything she had done, everything she'd ever been, all the dreams and grand visions she'd had for a future filled with tiny Airbending children flying around her home—had been only a journey along pretty roads.

She had walked a long and winding path, leading inevitably to this destination.

This, to be the victim of an old enemy's cold-blooded murder.

Not the first.

_Please,_ she prayed. _Please let me be the last._

And Azula's hand twisted, and Katara's neck snapped, and the breath left her lungs, and her heart stopped beating, and the last thing she ever saw was her husband's entire body beginning to glow with piercing light, and…all of her became nothing at all.

_Crack._

* * *

From within the chest of the Avatar came the anguished scream of a dying god.

It made the ocean beneath Azula's feet tremble like the skin on a drum. The world became filled with brilliant white light, more blinding than the noon sun, and it _hurt_; Azula squeezed her eyes shut and clapped both hands over them, but the light struck through her flesh.

Even through her closed eyes she could see the outlines of her finger bones.

A man's hand shrouded in white melded with the skin over her heart chakra, and the accompanying palm that slammed against her skull and stayed there drove her to her knees. She could hear thoughts that were not hers. One word repeated over and over again.

_**DIE**._

She had enough time for one thought of her own—_so this is what an Energybending battle is like—_before she lost all thought and knelt at the feet of the Avatar, blind and deaf in the screaming whiteness, the light peeling her like an apple.

_**DIE**._

The light tore away her hair in smoldering clumps and sizzled the flesh from her skull. It chewed the skin and muscle from her hands and sliced her breasts down to bare and bloody ribs. It chipped away her bones, gnawed into her stomach cavity, and crushed her skull like a grape beneath a boot.

_**DIE**._

In that merciless brilliance, she realized the one truth.

She was nothing. The Avatar was All.

Shame overpowered her, shame more potent than the sizzling agony of his light. She was only mud, filth, a mixture of skin and shit with breath inside. The light that dissolved her was purifying her, all majestic strength and power. Faced against the Avatar of the Earth, the Ruler of All Life, the Personification of the World Made Whole, what was she?

She was low and vile.

A waste of flesh polluted with blood.

Pathetic.

Contemptible.

She was weak, worthless, no matter how much she learned, no matter what secrets she dug up in libraries, she would always be a vessel full of base hungers for food and revolting, perverse lusts for sex. She took into her body all the fine things that the Avatar's Earth created, every crisp apple and soft pear and lovely grape, cool clean springwater, savory herbs, roasted meats, and her sinful, loathsome body transformed them into nothing but foul piss and stinking shit.

The flames of his light that burned away her flesh were more than justice—they were death, and such a great gift death would be, just to escape the disgust that choked her. Free of her disgusting self, she could become one with the pure, searing light, the way she had glimpsed Oneness with the world's people when she'd been taught how to Energybend by Wan Shi Tong…

The Avatar. How could she ever have struggled against him? Everything she had ever done, everything she'd ever believed, it was all so horribly, humiliatingly _wrong_. She was a child. An _infant_. Spoiled and whining as she wrapped herself tighter into shit-filled blankets. Like a juvenile delinquent, she never should have been trusted to do _anything_. If only someone had looked after her, directed her, shown her the true way, led her in the Avatar's Way, protected her from herself…

Boiling tears ran from eyes that cooked beneath His gaze, scalding her cheeks.

This wasn't even a battle. It was agony. She begged for a killing blow.

The knuckles of one hand grazed something hard and cold—a long sliver of ice, shattered into a shape like that of a long knife.

Her salvation.

_Father. I'm so sorry._

To die would be nothing more than falling asleep.

The icy hilt of the shard felt smooth and cool as night after a long hard day, so inviting and such a comfort in the palm of her hand, and it made Azula think, _Something is not right here._

This light that was burning her to ash, this purifying flame that was dissolving her flesh and charring her bones…had left the ice at her side not even _damp_ with moisture?

How could she even _feel_ it, with the skin of her hands burned away? How could she feel anything at all?

How could she still be alive to _think_?

She picked the icicle up and clutched it, hard, feeling the strength of her own grip, the clean health of her muscles; she felt new breath surge into her lungs, and she felt the grace of her balance as she came to her feet. She thought, with amazed admiration, _You sneaky son of a bitch._

She lifted the ice shard up to her face, horizontal, and felt its cool shade against her cheeks.

In the shadow of the icicle, she could squint open her eyes.

The power of his light struck through the translucent ice, transforming it into a lens of clear crystal. She looked through the blade, and directly at the Avatar. With the ice that he had made now held in front of her like a shield, she stood and held her ground.

The Avatar stood directly in front of her, his head frozen and body like a statue. Even through the sheltering icicle and squinted eyes, he was almost impossible to look upon—his skin was screaming brilliance.

Azula found herself baring her teeth in a smile that a ruby firedrake would recognize.

The Avatar's head adjusted a millimeter; he noticed her. The light from his face stabbed her eyes like needles, and for a moment all she could do was stare transfixed by the full force of the alien malice that poured from him. Which began to increase.

What she had felt before had been only a shadow of the terrible power that beat against her now. All that fear, all the loathing of her body and her being, all of that brutal self-hatred now roared tenfold within her, growing every second, now a hundredfold, a thousand…

But now she knew better. She knew that this came from the outside, not from within. She knew that this was what the Avatar _wanted_ her to feel. To believe.

She said, growling like a panther-wolf, _"Illusions."_

And she took another step.

The light sharpened even more. Who was she to judge Him? Could she thunder like Him? Could she bring light through the darkness? Could she order the tides to ebb and flow, or make the clouds bring rain after famine? Could she bring destruction, and then replace the damage with a multi-thousand years' worth of creation?

Healthy lips, full of blood and life, pulled back from her teeth as she spat onto the ice. She had learned better tricks than this while studying in the Library of Wan Shi Tong.

"_Is that all you are?"_ she asked. _"Is that all that the Avatar really is? The ability to bend the elements? Long memories from previous lifetimes? Those don't make you a rightful leader. They just make you into a magician."_

Through the screaming brilliance, she heard explosions—now the earth, miles below the deep ocean, was trembling beneath her.

She answered with her own power: her feet became rooted like an ancient oak, and she rode the rocking of their ice-raft like a seal-otter riding a cresting wave.

Now there were no longer words, only meaning, only Power that beat at Her and tried to strike Her down. The ancient collection of souls that She faced roared at Her of Her tyranny and war-mongering, of betrayal and the evilness that plagued Her every act. She answered Him with the love of infants suckling her breast, children thanking her for taking away the pain of sickness and injury, of sweet wine and sweaty sex among teenagers, and the blissful serenity of young adults as their passionate fires grew into the long-lasting coals of love.

He screamed His Power.

She sang Her Lust.

He thundered for vengeance, and She replied, _"Guess what?"_

He did not bother answering.

"_Remember when I said I wouldn't kill you?"_

He poured his soul into His attack. Abandoning the mental attacks in exchange for a physical one, His glowing right hand snapped forward to bury His fist into Her heart.

The Naked Lady's left hand intercepted the oncoming wrist, stopping His attack cold, causing the Avatar's eyes to gape wide as He discovered Her strength.

"_I lied."_

She formed Her right thumb and forefinger into a half-moon curve, rigid and hard as iron.

She plunged them into both of the Avatar's furious, white eyes.

And then Azula sent every remaining ounce of her will coursing down her arm, red flame igniting at her elbow and strengthening as it approached her wrist. Fire burst and spit and cooked and steamed, boiling his blood, melting his skin from the inside out. And the king of the elements, the father and master of earth, fire, wind, and water, the most ancient line of royalty the world had ever known, screamed in agony—

—_screamed _in _agony_—

—_SCREAMED _in _AGONY—_

And when the Avatar of the World screamed, the world screamed right along with him.

Thousands of years of erosion and time hadn't been able to do what Aang's death resulted in. Sacred temples deep in the heart of jungles and swamps and various other wilderness areas cracked and crumbled as the grounds shook with earthquake, or simply sunk into the ground like quicksand. Entire mountains that housed all four Air Temples were shaken into nothing but tons and tons of rubble.

Volcanos that had long been dormant for decades—generations, even—now suddenly woke and erupted liquid flame, scalding tears down the face of Mother Earth. Forests burned. Homes were destroyed by hungry tongues of fire. Innocents fled for their lives, or were devoured.

The air screamed with tortured howling as every cloud struck lightning down to earth, and every current of air formed itself into cyclones, hurricanes, tornados, dervishes, twisters that danced around each other like enormous fingers curling down from the clouds, smiting the world with great and terrible fists.

The waters of every hotspring bubbled over, hissing like acid and destroying every green living thing within reach. Tidal waves crashed onto the farthest shores, dragging Earth Kingdom trading merchants, Fire Nation naval officers, and Water Tribe fishermen beneath foaming white surf.

Finally, the death of the Avatar would be remembered as the night that all Benders—men, women, children of all ages that had so much as a smidge of talent for elemental control—experienced terrible visions and nightmares that they would never, ever forget. Several million people instantly collapsed, retching, grabbing their heads, screaming and weeping. They all had waking nightmares of varying description, but the theme was exactly the same:

Their leaders—the masters, the sensei, the gurus, the teachers, the parents—all dead. The world thrown into chaos. Envy replacing selfless sacrifice, and lawlessness spreading across the world like ripples across a pond, destroying any semblance of control or discipline.

This, at the time of occurrence, went unnoticed by the murderer of the Avatar.

* * *

Azula—clear of the Avatar's blinding light spell, holding the broken and shuddering corpse of a grown man by one hand—took a very long moment to contemplate what she had just done.

It may have lasted a full second. Perhaps even close to two.

"I suppose this means I win," she muttered to herself.

She had not only killed the original four members of Team Avatar, but she still had the living _daughter_ of the greatest Waterbender the world had ever seen lying unconscious right at her naked feet. That was an untapped resource of incredible strength—_and_ entertainment, considering that if Katara happened to be watching from On High, there was no telling how many ways Azula could make that bitch's ghost weep tears of crimson.

There were plenty of discoveries to make and mysteries to resolve with regards to all arts of Bending—such as Toph's miraculous black bracelet (where _had_ that trinket gone to, anyway? Ah, yes—presumably it would be somewhere at the bottom of Zephyr Lake), or the invisible line that separated Benders from Non-Benders. And of course, since she already knew how to make oneself immortal, there was the little puzzle of bringing a certain loved one back from the dead. Discovering the secrets of all these mysteries wouldn't be too difficult.

The roads of "What Azula Could Do" and "What Everyone Else Could Do" didn't really intersect in any meaningful way. Discovering how she could solve these mysteries would undoubtedly help her in bringing the world's populace under her control. It was simply a question of evaluating powers that the Avatar did not have, knowledge that the Avatar did not know, and controlling that which the Avatar could not control.

After she dealt with her brother.

First things first, of course.

And now that she thought about it, Azula realized that once she had killed Zuko, and Mai, and taken her revenge on Ty Lee completely, she might—_maybe_—have peace.

She had just killed the Avatar. Outsmarted the Great Spirit of the Ocean. Defeated the two greatest blade-wielding warriors that the world had to offer. Blown away a decorated Fire Nation general, and a prodigious teacher of Earthbending entrepreneurship.

_I've already beaten the strongest fighters that this world could throw at me,_ she thought, looking down at the Avatar's corpse, then the body of Katara, and finally the motionless form of the little girl lying far away at the iceberg's edge. _Hmph. Hooray for me. _

Her Crowning Moment of Awesome should really have been more spectacular.

Well. It wasn't really right to feel celebration after such pathetic opponents, was it? Celebrating this victory would be like doing a victory dance after scorching an anthill into glass. Still, though…not bad. She supposed she could give herself points for style.

Poor little Aang and Katara. Nothing more, and little more, than a pair of ants.

She couldn't quite make herself believe it, though. It didn't' seem real. Had she really just killed not only the Priestess of the Ocean _and_ the Avatar of the Earth, and now had their daughter to play with as well?

Vidia moaned, lost in the nightmares of unconsciousness.

Apparently so.

_So that,_ she decided, _is that._

Azula stood over the child's unconscious body. The little one might have been a statue carved of frost—she was clearly freezing after lying so long on the iceberg her father had made. A mischievous grin crossed over her face, and Azula waved one hand like a conjurer. The ice beneath Vidia suddenly opened like a gaping maw, and the girl dropped down beneath the surface of the ice and into the ocean below…only to be instantly buoyed up by the Naked Lady, her tiny form coated in living water.

Azula froze the water into hardness around the little girl. Not even her head was free to breathe.

_Let's see how long she can last like that._

She didn't even bother keeping the girl's body on the iceberg; with a flick of one wrist, the Naked Lady hurled the newly-formed ice prison towards the northernmost horizon. She didn't even bother to notice where the girl landed—perhaps some hundreds of miles away—but instead she turned and faced southwest.

Somewhere over _that_ horizon was the Fire Nation.

Inside that nation was her brother.

_So,_ she decided, as lightning crackled across her skin and her body shot upwards into the clouds. _It looks like the time has come to pay my last remaining family member a visit._

Family, after all, was supposed to stick together.

Till death, at least. Well, no…not like that—they weren't _married_ or anything...

But then again, how much more 'of one flesh' could a brother and sister be?


	9. Chapter 9

Midnight.

In the Fire Nation, the air was warm and dry, with the occasional damp gust from the north that signaled oncoming clouds. It all added up to equal the perfect conditions for brushfires.

At the base of the Fire Palace's sparring courtyard—the place where a teenage boy had wrested the crown of his kingdom away from his little sister—Fire Lord Zuko stood ready for battle.

Ceramic and steel armor covered his torso and back, metal gauntlets and braces protecting his arms, fingers, and legs from fire. Twin curving broadswords hung from the center of his back; their blades were old, and nicked here and there along their razor sharp edges, but the steel was folded over a thousand times and hardened in the fires of Zuko's own personal furnace—the heat coming solely from himself, as befitting a Fire Lord. He'd considered donning his old Blue Spirit gear, but only for an instant; the Blue Spirit wasn't needed here tonight. The Fire Lord was.

He waited patiently for his enemy to arrive.

He knew she would.

Zuko was probably the only one left. The visions that had blasted into his mind, along with the minds of every Firebender within screaming distance, were clear enough in their meaning. The Avatar was gone. Perhaps dead. But certainly something bad had happened to him. Aang would not be coming to the rescue on this maddened, insane night, while distant lakes coated their surface with azure flame and allied island nations suddenly ceased to exist.

He would have to be enough, then. He would have to send Azula back into the hell that she had come from. All that he could do now was wait for her to arrive.

Zuko had no actual evidence, but he was no fool. He'd chosen his place on the Agni Kai court immediately after the visions had ended, ordering his armor to be brought over first, then issuing a command for the entire Fire Palace to evacuate itself of every guest, ambassador, guard, servant, advisor, and royal—he did not expect the building to survive the night. At least he could make sure that everyone else had a head start.

At his back, Zuko's personal advisor cleared his throat politely and gave a crisp, brief report. "My Lord, the reports have been confirmed from several other sources. Kyoshi Island has been destroyed."

Zuko closed his eyes, making sure that his breathing was slow and deep. To break out of his pre-battle meditation would allow emotion to register, and right now emotion was the last thing he needed to be feeling. "By fire and lightning, I assume."

"By, ah…by all _four_ elements, my Lord."

"No survivors?"

"None that we know of. All reports come from outside sources. Night fishermen, ferrymen and the like." The aide paused, a tiny amount of worry leaking itself past the steel walls of his ingrained professionalism. "It would be…_best_… to assume that this is the result of some kind of rebel Fire Nation sect—perhaps one devoutly obedient to the memory of Ozai—"

"It's not." Zuko had already dealt with all the fanatical loyalists years ago. "It's her."

"As…as my Lord says."

"Have the charges been set?"

"Just now, not three minutes ago. The slowest burning fuse we could find—"

"If there's time, Lao, I will go back to sever it. Just make sure that there's no one left inside."

"If…my Lord, if you like, _I_ can stay inside and sever it when the time is almost up…?"

"No." Irritation made its presence known, and Zuko shoved it back down beneath layers of self-control. "Otherwise there would be no point in lighting them in the first place. Your duty is nearly done for the evening, but I have one more assignment for you. You know where my wife is. Go to her, instruct her to stay put. Double her guard. Make sure she is as safe as possible, and _let her know_ that I need her to stay put. After you've done all that, I need you to go far away from this place. Leave the Nation, if you can."

"My—my Lord?" Concern and puzzlement coated his voice thickly. "Am I…being banished?"

"No. You are going on an indefinite holiday. It will last until you are certain that I'm still alive."

"My Lord, I _strongly_ advise that you at least keep a platoon of your guards here."

"No."

"With apologies: That is what your guards are _for_."

"Their purpose is to fight. Not to die uselessly against an enemy that they know nothing about."

Lao was silent.

In the distance, thunder rumbled. Miles ahead, yet coming in fast from directly in front, was a blanket of clouds that covered the illumination of the stars and moon.

"She'll be ready for that kind of fight." Zuko waved one hand. "Dismissed."

"Yes, my Lord. At once, my Lord."

And, with the practiced invisibility and silence of a lifelong faithful servant, Lao disappeared.

Leaving his master alone.

Awaiting the oncoming storm.

He looked deep into the clouds as they crossed over the light of the moon, almost as if the approaching darkness was some sort of premonition for his future. And perhaps it was. Maybe darkness was the only future he had—empty, and vast, and silent. So dark he might as well be blind.

Or dead.

He waited until he was certain that there was no one else around him. Then, speaking so softly that it might as well have been a private whisper, he said, "Azula."

The storm ahead blossomed into a firefly's swarm of heat lightning, bright flickers of blue fire deep inside the thunderclouds, but providing no crackling boom of thunder.

"I know you're out there. I know you're watching."

Around his head, the wind began to pick up.

"Come out. Face me."

"_Zuko…"_

Her voice came all around, everywhere at once, part of the silky wind that whipped through the long strands of his salted hair. The voice of a ghost.

"_We don't have to be enemies any longer, my brother. Our true enemies are no more. I love you. I always have. And I have come home. Let us embrace, as those who love each other."_

Again, the clouds ahead hummed with fiery energy. Zuko reached his awareness outward, feeling for the source of that energy, knowing that it would contain his sister.

"I know why you're here," he answered the wind, both eyes drifting closed. "This is no longer your home. This is only as far as you go."

"_Do you honestly hate me so much? We are family. We are kin, flesh of the same flesh. The same blood is pumped within both of our hearts. We are the same, Zuko, practically identical."_

"You and I have never been the same." The Fire Lord spoke without the slightest coloring of emotion. "Someone like you will always be my enemy, no matter what you do. And I'll always be there to fight you."

"_Why fight me at all?"_ the storm asked. _"You haven't even caught a glimpse of how I've changed. Believe me when I warn you, Zuko: you are capable of a great many things, but striking me down is not one of them. Your heart is too confused—you STILL love me, deep within, even though you try to hate me. My own heart is the opposite..."_

This time, the lightning speared out of the boiling cauldron of clouds, arcing upward and then down, heading straight for the Fire Lord like an arrow released from the bow. The lightning struck the opposite side of the courtyard, and the thunderclap that announced her arrival made Zuko's ears ring.

Fire Princess Azula said, "The hate in my heart is _pure_."

And Zuko saw that she had not aged a day.

It had been over a decade and a half since Zuko had last seen her. In that time, he himself had changed—a couple unwanted pounds here and there, the fresh gathering of wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, a few strands of silver in otherwise jet-black hair. He had grown. He had _changed_.

But Azula hadn't changed at all. Black hair the same shade and style of a raven's wings. Middle height of an adolescent teenage girl, built with the perfect balance of lean muscle and feminine curves that some women were lucky to hang onto for a year or two. Her lips were just as cruel, her eyes just as hard, her every motion as precise and calculated as it ever was. It was like looking at a walking memory of days long past.

Well. Back then, she hadn't been quite so…naked.

His sister looked him up and down and said, in the exact same condescending taunt that he remembered so well, "The years haven't been so kind, have they?"

Zuko returned her jest with a voice of mock pity. "Well. You don't look _that_ bad."

She started towards him with a slow, almost exaggerated walk. "You don't approve? You should see how I _really_ look these days; you probably wouldn't even recognize me. Admittedly, my outfit is a little racy for our first reunion, I suppose." She locked eyes with her brother. "But then again…we're all family here, right?"

"Father never asked about you," he answered.

Azula froze.

"After he was put into prison," he went on. "I would visit him a lot, and we'd talk. Go on walks every so often. Chat about random, regular things. He never asked about how you were doing or anything."

Her eyes narrowed, and in them he could see the promise of an oncoming hell. He kept going.

"Would you like to visit him before we continue? I made sure to bury him in the back yard; couldn't put up a headstone or anything, it would've made the neighbors a little uncomfortable—"

Lightning crackled and thunder roared once again as Azula's hands curled themselves into dainty little fists, but Zuko didn't care—he'd had _sex_ that wasn't as good as seeing his sister go speechless. The seductive beauty and grace of her features was instantly replaced with animal rage, naked hatred being glared at him from a hundred paces away. Had both of her eyes been daggers, Zuko was certain she would have yanked them out of her own head to throw.

He grinned. Totally worth it.

Azula allowed the storm above to crackle and spit jagged tongues of electricity everywhere for one long second, and then just as abruptly caused the night to go silent.

Zuko said nothing.

"Trying to make me lose control, with _childish taunts_?" she asked, forced laughter decorating each syllable. "The old Zuko would've never stooped so _low_. He would have been too preoccupied with doing the _honorable_ thing, giving his enemy every possible advantage. And look at you now: the best Firebender on the face of the world, yet still you bring armor and weapons to an Agni Kai?"

"This isn't an Agni Kai," he said. "This is war."

"Oh? I think you're wrong about that." She spread out her hands as if to say, _behold!_ "I mean, look at where we are, and what we have made of ourselves. You, who betrayed your own family and nation during the time we needed you most…now ruling the land and preparing to kill your last remaining threat to the throne. And here I am…exactly as I used to be."

"A monster."

"Sticks and stones, brother. _Think_. What happened, during our Agni Kai? How did it end?"

"You should know. You were there."

"Indeed I was. And that's the point—_you didn't beat me._ It was your little Waterbender girlfriend that did all the work—and you _let her_. You violated the sacred laws of the Agni Kai, honorable battle, and just as you were about to lose you had an outsider fight your battle for you. The Fire Nation has been ruled by a cheating coward ever since."

"Sticks and stones, sister."

"So," she continued, only pausing for dramatic effect, "I have come here to finish our duel. The same girl. Using the same amount of power that Sozin's Comet had given me." Her hand blossomed into azure flame, tingeing the left side of her face the same color of the Blue Spirit's demonic mask. "Granted, the Comet can't help _you_ tonight…but you're the Fire Lord. I'm sure your power has more than compensated for lost time."

"Whatever." Zuko reached one hand over his shoulder and drew out his weapons. "I left my honor back in the palace. I'm not fighting a _duel_ against you."

"Well that's a shame, Zuko, because I'm fighting one against _you_."

Zuko did not give any quarter, and expected to receive none in return.

His sister read his eyes, and understood that their conversation had come to an end. She began to walk towards him.

He shot forward, blades flashing.

The storm above them imitated the crash of volcanic fury as their Agni Kai, kept on hiatus for so many years, breathed in new life and spat fire upon the court.

* * *

Mei resolved that, if Zuko survived this evening, she was going to kill him.

_Honestly_, she thought, pushing her way through rows of guards as Lao stayed right on her heels, pleading. _If my husband thinks that he's going to sacrifice himself for the greater good, for ANY good greater than his wife, then he's got another thing coming._

Her left hand absently stroked the curve of her belly. Beneath the long sleeves of her maternity robes, the fingers of her right hand caressed the steel of a dozen thin, sharp throwing blades that were wrapped around her wrist in a bracelet.

_More like twelve things coming. Sharp things. Directly at his face._

Ye Spirits and stars, it was amazing that she hadn't stabbed the uptight monarch already.

"My _Lady_," the aide was stammering, "the Fire Lord's orders were quite _clear_! You _must_ stay here!"

Even through compressed lips, Mei could keep her voice deadly soft. "Don't worry. He's not going to punish you when he sees me."

"I'm not worried about _punishment_, my Lady, I'm worried about _you_. I'm worried about your _condition_."

"What condition?" She glanced over her shoulder, walking calm and unhindered through a forest of armed guards protecting the private nursery cottage nearly a mile away from the palace. "You act as if a pregnant wife has never temporarily lost her mind and tried to nag at her husband."

"It hasn't happened in any recent days, my Lady, I'm quite certain." Lao, much like the rest of the royal guardsmen that were Mei's personal bodyguard entourage, was under strict orders to never lay a hand on the Fire Lady of his nation. Nevertheless, he stayed right on her heels, yapping like a small pet. "The Fire Lord is preparing for _battle_. I've seen him, talked to him—there is something akin to madness that burns in his eyes, my Lady, and it is inviting chaos to rain down on this Nation. Please. If he is killed, we cannot afford to lose you _or_ your heir—"

"My husband," Mei said softly, "is an arrogant fool who believes that the ghosts of his past are coming back to haunt him. Perhaps that is madness, perhaps not. But I can promise you this, Lao…." And here her voice dropped to a level of such icy coldness, such _certainty_, that it was practically imprinted onto the cobblestones beneath their feet. "My husband wants me to sit idly by, while he risks his life and abandons all those who would fight alongside him? Then he is in for a disappointment, because I will _not_ 'sit idly by' while _anything_ happens to him, my home, or my people."

She looked away from him, and instead turned her attention to the men surrounding her. "Listen to me, all of you. Your Lord has commanded you to protect me. I will not ask you to disobey him—in fact, I want you to stay with me at all times."

The men were silent, but she had their rapt attention. Mei could see the energy humming through their very postures, like racing jackalopes right in front of the starting line. They burned to go to battle and fight an enemy. They burned to _do _something.

"I see in your eyes the same fire that smolders in mine. You are all the best at what you do, and sadly, you have been given the assignment of _standing guard_. Well, as your Fire Lady, I am altering your assignments. You are no longer guards. You never joined this military to _be_ guards. You are _warriors,_ born and bred, each and every one of you. And tonight, there is a threat to your home, and we shall all go to war _against it!_"

The cottage had originally been protected by a force of two hundred and fifty guardsmen. After staying faithful to the orders given to him by the Fire Lord, Lao had personally seen to it that those ranks were now five hundred strong.

Mei didn't have time to organize them into equal groups. She simply held out one arm in front of her. "Pay attention! When we get there, all the men to my left are hereby ordered to attack and kill whatever threats there are to my husband. All of you on my right, you are tasked with retrieving him and bringing him to my side. I'll get some sense into him, and it won't be by talking."

That got a few knowing chuckles from several of the men. Many of them knew how persuasive any wife could be, and that power seemed to triple during times of maternity.

"Any questions?"

One guardsman called out from the back, "Once our Lord is secured, what is our next task? What if the enemy is stronger, or has us at a disadvantage?"

It was too early to make a decision based on what little they actually knew of their enemy, but Mei understood that a leader of any force could not afford to show hesitation in her responses. "Analyze. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome."

The guardsman nodded, and that was that.

Mei didn't like it—improvisation was for actors who were too stupid to learn their lines, or leaders who were too stupid to plan—but desperate times called for throwing the rule book out every now and then.

"Any more questions?"

There were none.

Mei climbed aboard the valet carriage and sat atop the cushions like a queen upon the throne. "Then, to the palace! Quick march!" Four strapping men grabbed ahold of the carriage grip bars, lifted, and with vigor that surprised even themselves, began to run toward the palace that glowed in the night. It was not difficult to find their way.

The entire building was being lit like a torch.

* * *

Flame to flame, they were practically twins.

They were _more_ than brother and sister, knew each other more closely than husband and wife, each one understanding the other straight down to the marrow of their blood, the beating of their hearts, the anger in their souls. They were complimentary tongues of flame, burning upon a funeral pyre.

The ground of the Agni Kai court was coated in black soot, trailing footprints that were the only record of the battle. Though the battlefield was not limited only to Zuko's chosen ground—before long, he began stepping backwards, up the courtyard steps, a strategic withdrawal.

Hopefully, it would make Azula think he was retreating.

They punched and kicked, stabbed and twirled, feinted and dodged and parried and traded blow after blow on top of blow. Zuko threw away all the boundaries and restrictions of his training, drawing upon the red fire of hatred for his enemy, and mixing it with the golden shower of flame that was born of his duty, his commitment to the Fire Nation, his obligation to his own people and the people of the free world, the love of his wife... Everything he could draw upon within himself, he poured out of himself. He had to. _Everything_ was on the line.

Fire Lord Zuko was cutting loose.

And Fire Princess Azula was there to meet him, without so much as a stumble.

Where his blades cut and sliced, they met only air, or were subtly parried with open palms upon the flat of their spans. Whenever his flame crashed down like a wave upon the ocean, or shot out in a fountain stream as if from a dragon's snout, her own icy blue fire was there to turn his heat aside, barely a millimeter from blistering her naked skin. Sometimes he would sacrifice the distance that Firebending allowed for a straight-up, no holds barred, physical attack from his gauntleted hands and armored feet. And she was there to block, and return bare-skinned attacks of her own that landed with such force that they dented his armor.

This was not brother against sister.

This was not tyrant against liberator.

This was not Fire Lord against Naked Lady.

It had absolutely nothing to do with honor or philosophy, goals or upbringing, favoritism from _this_ parent, or rejection from _that_ one. Whereas the battle against the Avatar and his wife had been on a scale so monumental that it had been sheer universal opposites clashing head-to-head, this battle was the exact opposite.

It was only Zuko, and Azula.

Intimately.

Just the two of them.

The pain that they had caused each other. The hate that burned between them both. The knowledge that neither could live while the other one thrived. The certainty that one would cause the other to burn.

Zuko kept up his attacks and subtle retreats, maneuvering them both inside the palace walls. Tapestries and carpets, entire sets of exquisitely carved furniture, scrolls and books lining the walls—all of it was subject to zero mercy from the flames. The amount of collateral damage wrecked upon the Fire Nation palace made the destruction of Admiral Zhao's Ember Island home look like nothing more than a spilled candle by comparison.

Eventually, Zuko knew, there would be nothing left to burn.

The creature that was his sister ducked one blade, slapped aside the other, and delivered a solidly-connecting heel kick that pushed Zuko, stumbling, back nearly ten feet. "I thought you would have kept up your training?" she asked. "You used to be better than this."

Zuko said nothing.

Her lips twisted into a sneering grimace as she slung a whipcrack of flame towards him. "I'll bet it was Mei, wasn't it? She probably made you quit combat training…in favor of what? Ballroom dancing?"

The blue whip was easily blocked by the crisscrossed X of both swords. Zuko did not advance, but stayed right where he was.

Azula noticed.

"Getting tired?"

He said nothing. But there was a ragged note of exhaustion coloring the music of his heavy breathing.

"Can't you keep step with little sister?"

Like a meteor, she shot forward and landed a face-punch—it was only a miraculous lowering of Zuko's head that caused her fist to strike the bony ridge of his forehead, instead of the soft center of his nose. Still, his head snapped back, and it was enough for the creature he fought to land another kick directly into the center of his armored abdomen, folding the metal like it was so much tin, breath being crushed from his lungs, launching him towards the farthest stairwell.

"Or are you all out of _breath_, windbag?"

The Fire Lord only responded by backing up the stairs, left hand gripped tightly around the hilt of his one remaining sword, using it as a walking stick while he tried to gasp smoky air into his spasming lungs.

"Running? _Running away from me?_" The creature's beautiful face twisted into something furious, shocked. "Are you actually _running from a fight_, Zuko? _HAVE YOU GROWN INTO THAT MUCH OF A COWARD?!_"

Zuko said nothing. Just kept backing up the stairs.

She appeared at the footcase of the stairwell, baring teeth, the body of a feral cat about to pounce, snarling, _"Is THIS what I came back to? Is THIS what the son of Ozai has become?"_ She followed him, no longer trying to catch him, merely marching up the stairs like an executioner climbing the ladder of the gallows. Her every step left flaming footprints on the carpet. _"_If this is all you are_—_if all you are is a middle-aged _coward _who runsaway_—_then you and I truly _are_ enemies_."_

At the top of the staircase, Zuko fell into the nearest doorway, finding himself inside the newly refurbished nursery. Children-sized furniture were tucked into the corners, a crib and miniaturized table and chairs, while the walls were painted with happy decorations.

He had time for one thought (_Hell of a place to make a last stand_) before the creature was standing in the doorway.

"Give me one good reason." She glared at him through furious eyes, her beautiful black hair dishelved, crisped, curling from the demonic heat. Both lips were grimacing over sharp teeth. "Give me _one_…_good…reason_…why I shouldn't just chop off your head and be done with you." She looked exactly as before, when the madness had completely taken hold during their last fight.

_Got her._

Zuko stopped his haggard breathing. He stood up straight. With one hand he unbuckled the dented breastplate and let it fall to the floor, while the other raised his remaining sword in a fencer's ready stance. When he spoke, his voice was clear, and calm, and centered. Resigned to his fate.

"Because this is where I'm going to kill you."

The creature's eyes widened, then narrowed. "What?"

"There's another word for running away, sis." Zuko's smile was a cold, smug mirror of her own. "It's called 'Strategic Withdrawal'."

"_What?"_

The creature looked around them, at the small room they were in, and realized that she'd been suckered. Suckered out of the open-air courtyard, drawn into the tight, close quarters, chivvied precisely where he'd wanted her to go.

From the open window, coming down from the courtyard, came the trumpeting roar of an invading army. One thousand boots striking the ground. Hundreds of armored gauntlets striking armored breastplates. Hundreds of voices raised into the familiar Pledge of the Fire Nation.

Fire Lord Zuko raised the corner of one mouth into a smirk. "And if you think _I'm_ a pain in the ass, just wait 'till you see what my wife can do."

Her reaction to the news was almost instantaneous.

She had been led into a trap, fallen completely for it, and the teeth of said trap were composed of not only five hundred Firebenders who lusted after her blood, but a Fire Lord and Lady who were willing to stop at nothing to kill her and have her out of their lives. And the collective amount of dismay that it brought down upon her manifested itself into…

One single, flippant shrug of a shoulder.

Zuko didn't care. A false show of nonchalance, meant to disarm him? Didn't matter. He was taking no chances. He'd wait right here until the army showed up. "You're not going anywhere."

"Do you remember the collective noun for dragons is the word _conflagration_? It's a beautiful, poetic word, don't you think?"

Zuko's eyes—well, his good eye, at least—narrowed.

"What are you talking about?"

"Do you know what they call a collection of _ruby firedrakes_?"

Then came the screams. Awed at first, then panicked, the sound of Zuko's reinforcements going from battle-ready to disbelieving fear.

"They call it a _massacre." _Azula crossed her arms, and leaned against the nearest wall.

Zuko shot over to the window and leaned his head outside, mouth hanging open, a silent _No_ balanced on his lips.

Azula stepped beside him and peered over his shoulder. Ordinarily she would have stayed leaning against the wall with arms crossed—that is, the Fire Princess would have, sacrificing the sight of her cavalry flying over the hill, just for the sake of appearing calm and cool and collected—but the Naked Lady decided that here in the relative company of an audience of one, an occasion like this transcended the need to appear cool.

This was _awesome_.

Their group was too big to really comprehend as they swooped down from the cloud cover. The only firedrake that Zuko had ever seen—the only drake _any_ of the Firebenders had seen before—had been courtesy of paintings and imaginary pictures from stories told by grandparents.

The invading army of tens, dozens, hundreds of drakes that rained down from the sky all screamed in bloodlust for the impending kills to be had. Their eyes glowed red, gleaming like the precious stones that were their namesake. Their teeth gleamed. Their wings spread wide to blot out the stars.

And on their backs, tied securely to leather saddles, were hundreds of naked barbarians.

"The hidden peoples," Azula said simply. "I paid them a visit a few weeks back. Convinced them to stop hiding. Proved to them that mankind was going to have _new_ leadership, with them as a guiding force."

Zuko remembered them well. The protectors of the last dragons. The hidden tribe that he and Aang had found, so many years ago, baptizing him in the new ways of Firebending that he now used.

And Azula had manipulated them into attacking his home.

He whirled to her, eyes flashing terrible fury, hands twisted into claws that crackled with his own electricity. "_YOU—!"_

A small lightning bolt struck him directly in the chest.

Azula sighed as she sank down beside him, a slow _ahhhhh_ like she was sinking into a warm bubbling hot spring. "Lie still, brother. Lie still." Her voice had a soft excitement to it, as if she were about to show him a gift she'd been hiding for days. "Don't worry, you're not going to die. Not just yet. When I give you your blessed release, you will _welcome _it."

Zuko, body twitching, tried to reach one hand towards his dropped sword.

Azula's hand touched it first. "Don't you see?" she asked, clenching her hands around the blade's razor edges and crushing it, bending it, shaping it like so much clay. "My vengeance isn't to kill you. It's to _make you beg for death._ So you'll love me when I kill you, understand?"

She dragged the Fire Lord across the carpeted floor with one pearlescent hand, wrenched both of his arms up together against one bar on the child's crib, and swiftly wrapped the ruined blade around his wrists, securing him. Bonds that no escape artist could free himself from—the best traps were the simplest, were they not?

Simplicity.

What a lovely way to burn.

"I really have to applaud your choice of weaponry," she said, sauntering over to where she had placed the weapon he'd lost. "Butterfly broadswords. It's so nice of you to bring a _spare_ blade."

She came back and cut a gash into the cloth of his robes like she'd been born with a sword in hand. Reaching one hand down, she tore the front of his robe into a long ragged strip of cloth, and then unceremoniously shoved it into his mouth as a gag.

The creature kissed her brother on the cheek, stepped into a corner, and sank into the shadows with the broadsword already raised for the kill.

"Now," she whispered, her lips pressed softly against the steel. "How long do you think it'll take for your wife to show up?"

* * *

Fire Lady Mei didn't care about the carnage around her as she tumbled out of her burning carriage and crawled for the nearest cover.

She didn't care about the sudden appearance of an army of naked nightmares. She didn't care about the men that she led, and how they were fighting and dying all around as she found the entrance leading into the flame-engulfed Great Hall. She didn't even care about how this incredible amount of confusion and fear might cause her pregnancy to end prematurely, with her son or daughter being born courtesy only of battlefield stress.

All she cared about was finding the man that she loved, and staying next to him. That was all that mattered.

Zuko and Mei. Just like it always was.

A mad dash carried her like the wind from the middle of the burning Hall and up the winding staircase. The baby's room. She'd seen his body, silhouetted against the fireglow of the nursery's window. She'd find him there. She could recognize his form anywhere.

Bursting through the nursery door, she had to keep herself from screaming. Her enemy wasn't there.

Her husband was.

He sat on both knees at the foot of the crib, practically wedged beneath it, reversed arms bound to the crib's metal bars and a rag clogged through his teeth. He moaned thickly through the rag, and his eyes spoke to her with numb, unreasoning horror.

She knelt beside him, laid one hand on his cheek while the other fumbled with the makeshift gag. "It's all right, Zuko," she said to ease his distress. "I'm here."

Tears streamed down his face, mixing with the greasy film of smoke on his skin. She twisted the knot open in the dirty rag that bound his mouth, and he shook his head away from her touch, spitting the rag away with a compulsive gasp. "Mei—_run_," he hissed in a voice as jagged as broken glass. "It's too late, _run!_"

"The fire's not so big yet, we can still—"

Zuko screamed, a wordless shriek of raw overpowering panic.

"_Mei dammit for once in your fucking life just do what I say and FUCKING RUN!"_

The Fire Lord thrashed. His shout came out ripped and bloody as though he were vomiting thorns. It shocked her, stopped her mouth like a punch. Her husband was no longer himself. She discovered, terrible awe breaking over her like the dawn in the mountains, that he was actually _frightened._

She stood, and started to turn, and she felt a shock at her shoulder, as though she'd been struck on the collarbone, sharply but not hard—like a slap from an infant, no real impact, just a cold wave that passed through her almost too quickly to be felt, icy fingertips trailing themselves from that shoulder down to her ribs on the opposite side. She tried to finish the turn, to see what had struck her, but now she was falling, sliding sideways and down and she couldn't feel her legs, she couldn't feel her left arm, she reached out for the ground with her right and struck hard on the floor, and flopped face-up—

And standing over her was a pregnant woman wearing her clothes, except it wasn't a woman, not all of one—it was only a torso with a left arm attached; where the head and arm were supposed to be there was only a gaping wound the size of the whole world, and as the legs buckled and the headless one-armed torso twisted and crumpled to the ground, the jet of heart's blood from the severed aorta fountained into the smoky air and hung, for one beautiful moment, in a perfect mockery of a question mark.

She thought, _That's my blood. That's me._

She tried to speak, tried to say _Zuko—Zuko I'm hurt, you have to help me,_ but her lungs had been left behind. She could do no more than move her lips and make faint desperate smacking noises with her tongue.

_Zuko,_ she tried to say, _Zuko, please—_

Then a girl-shaped shadow loomed over her, a lithe, beautiful nude figure against the golden orange of the firelit ceiling. The girl lifted a long broadsword that was so familiar and reversed its grip upon it, to drive it downward like a fencepost to be set into hard clay.

"_Do you still love him?"_ the creature hissed through a maddened grin of triumph. _"Do you still love him more than you fear me?"_

Its point came toward her eyes, and then the Fire Lady saw no more.

* * *

Right up to the end, Zuko kept thinking that there had to be a way out. He'd been in so many similar situations—trapped, no way out, an impossibly powerful foe—and somehow he'd always gotten home. The members of Team Avatar could always pull it off, no matter the odds, against all reasons, against all hope. They'd always found a way to tell the stories around a dinner table later.

Through every second he'd laid there, covered in smoke, the crackle of flames getting closer and closer, he had straight-armed despair by numbering all the times they'd somehow gotten through. All the way to the end, he'd forced himself to believe that Mei would see through the trap, that together they could save the day, that Azula would lose in the end, that they could all tell the story later.

That somehow, there would still be a happy ending.

Then when she came and the hidden Azula still wouldn't strike, he tried to speak to her with his eyes, to reach her with some language of horror. But she didn't understand. And she died. With only his curses as a farewell. Half of her fell away from the other half, and Zuko had no more breath to scream.

"_Yesss,"_ the creature hissed through her full red lips. Blood trailed over the sword's hilt and onto her fingertips, and the monster that was his sister licked the blood away with a long, reptilian tongue. _"Yesss, that's IT..."_

Before Zuko could focus, she appeared directly in front of him, face a millimeter from his own.

"Yes, Zuko. _Yes_, _my brother_. It's real. _It's all so very real_..." The creature slid him out from beneath the crib with one hand, the blood-drenched sword still held in a tight grip. She swung her naked thighs over him and straddled his waist, her free hand stroking his face, her voice shuddering with joyous, wet humidity. "I love you _so much_, Zuko…"

She leaned towards his face like she might kiss his lips, or bite them.

"_Please. _Please say that you want me back, big brother?"

Zuko couldn't even blink.

"Do you want me?" The creature ground her hips into his waist. "Do you want to _impale_ me, big brother? Thrust slowly into me? Slide deep into my belly?"

She raised the blade again, point down, and slowly pressed it through his navel, continuing the glacially-slow stab until the tip found wood floor. As smooth as a hot knife through butter. Zuko knew that the blade had just exited the center of his back. It didn't hurt. But the metal went directly across the bone of his spine, slicing against nerve endings, and he could feel the grinding, buzzing ache in his teeth.

An odd, distracted peace settled over him. A hollow sort of _oh never mind me._ The odd thing with getting a sword through the gut was that Zuko was rather okay with it. In an absent, unexpected sort of way. He could guess what was happening—he'd seen it in soldiers who had taken terrible, mortal wounds.

The _I'm all right_ syndrome.

Once the first shock of uncomprehending disbelief was over, his very first coherent thought was _Dying really isn't so bad._ _Did they all feel this way?_

That was why he could lie there, motionless, with a foot of steel growing from his stomach, Mei's blood splashed across his face and her intestines gently spilling across the marble floor, knowing that the situation was now truly hopeless, right along with any hope to surviving, and all he felt was a small bit of hope that Azula would go ahead and kill him before the fire could.

"I told you," she whispered. "I told you that this would happen. You'd _beg_ for me to kill you."

He said nothing. Not out of stoicism—if anything, that approach of death was welcome, and he could feel its inevitable pull as the blood of his life spilled from his body and into the carpeted floor. It was simple.

There was nothing more to say.

Well…

His lips opened, and they pressed together again and again as if they were conveying a mute message.

"What's that?" the creature asked, leaning one pale ear against the softness of his mouth. "One more time?"

"_I'm…t-taking you…—"_

The building around them collapsed.

The grand palace of the Fire Nation was a building formed at the beginning of the Age of the Avatar. It was built by the First Avatar himself, structured to encompass every aspect of Flame. The high towers of the palace, and the sloping, arrowhead-design of her ceilings, was more than just artistic choice—the building acted as a non-living Avatar that would forever stand, its stone and mortar continuously being re-strengthened as generations passed and Avatars re-visited the palace's halls. The decaying effects of time, it would seem, was no longer a threat.

The only way for the palace of the Fire Nation to fall was by destruction from within.

One hour before Zuko had placed himself out onto the Agni Kai court as bait, he had ordered one hundred barrels of explosive powder to be spread throughout his home's structure points and support beams. His own personal aide had lit the fuse. Had Azula failed to show, Zuko would have gone back to douse the fuse.

His sister had never been one to be late.

The castle around them shook, bucking like a maddened bull steer, and the floor gave a mighty crack as the building began to cave in on itself. Azula had time enough to take everything in—Mei dead, Zuko impaled upon the carpet like a caterfly pinned in a box, the familiar shockwaves of a building falling in on itself like an echo of Wan Shi Tong's monastery, the grim certainty that even _her_ advanced body wasn't strong enough to withstand a hundred metric tons of stone falling upon her head—and instinctively decided that escape was the most preferable course of action.

She spared one last look at the scarred face of her brother and said, "Dying like Samson, then? Collapsing the temple upon your own head? Poetic irony."

And then she burst out of the room through the nursery window, retreating to the safety of the stars like the fabled Pan.

She turned around and watched as the only home that she had ever truly known collapsed in on itself with a crumbling, tearing scream. Gouts of flame burst from this dissolving turret or that breached hall. Explosions of dust mixed with black smoke shot out every which way, blossoming into the sky like a massive dark eruption that made the stars wink out. Down below, she heard shrieks coming from startled drakes, victorious battle cheers from her barbarian army, and the terrible screams of dismay that could only come from an enemy force that knows their battle is lost, hopeless.

Azula, invisible against the night sky, clothed in smoke and dust, decided to wait in hover. There was nothing better to do while she counted down the seconds until the last of the Fire Nation guardsmen were killed. After that, of course, she would have to kill the barbarians she'd brought—no sense in having _that_ many loose strings after the first part of her plan was done and over, after all.

Luckily there was a storm hovering on the distance. Plenty of lightning to use up.

So, she watched as the battle below entered into the final stages of its endgame. There was a bit of melancholy regret at the fact that Zuko had died at his own hand rather than hers. History had a long line of rulers and warriors who had taken their own lives rather than suffer the shame of a defeat. Apparently her brother hadn't been such a coward after all.

And there was still the memory of the _pain_ she'd caused him, right up to the end.

Yes.

Mei's blood was still lingering on her tongue.

That was good enough. More than good.

It was delicious.

And finally, she was victorious. No more _real_ enemies that knew about her past. No more Team Avatar. The Fire Nation was now leaderless, the Earth Kingdom had lost quite a few capable nobles (and could lose a few more in the near future, if she so decided), Airbenders were now entirely extinct, and the Water Tribe had lost their most powerful piece on the board. The rest of the world was primed for her to rule.

Phase one, complete.

Phase two was about to begin.

She would wait a few weeks, perhaps a month, and let the people stir themselves into panicked swarms. Wars? Famines? Plagues? Death? All the things that brought despair and pain, she would allow to sweep through the world and kill the weak. Then she would appear, the Naked Lady, a loving, soothing balm to take away the pain and provide order, like a blessed mother in the house of humanity.

But what to do while she waited? With nothing to do between now and then?

Below, a final gust of flame was given from a firedrake, and the barbarians howled in triumph. The battle was over. Time to mop up. Then, she would return to a place of rest. Like Achilles returning to his tent with Briseis to wash the sweat and grit of battle away.

_After all_, she thought as she descended from the sky, lightning already dancing among her fingertips. _Ty Lee's going to want some company when she wakes up._


	10. Chapter 10

**Epilogue**

It is strange how some students become teachers, teaching the exact same lessons, yet the effects are entirely opposite of original intent.

When Ty Lee awoke, she was acutely aware that she was not on Kyoshi Island anymore—for it was far too cold for this time of year—she had been sleeping for an absurdly long period of time—for it was still dark outside, yet she felt so well rested that clearly an entire day had already gone by—and Azula had done something with her clothes—for she was naked as the day she was born.

She lay on something soft, padded, warm. Insanely comfortable. Like a palace couch that was covered in clouds. There was something pressing down on her body, and she realized that it was warm and comfortable too, and it covered her entirely, and it was somehow familiar…

_A blanket,_ she thought. _This is a blanket._

Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she looked around. She was in a small room of some kind, the walls and ceiling and floor made entirely out of mortared stone, as if no Earthbenders could be found to construct the walls and the builders had to do the work by hand.

The bed that she lay on was really a mat of thick, heavy furs, dark black and deliciously warm. Against the far wall were a pile of rolled up furs just like the ones she lay on, stacked on a shelf in a neat, orderly line. There was one window, but it was too high up for her to see out of—all that was visible was an ink-black sky littered with sparkling diamond stars.

_Where is this place?_

The temperature was cold, almost wintery. There were no sounds of people or busywork at all—it was very possible that Ty Lee was the only human being for miles. Was she really alone? She had to find out more. She looked around the floor for her clothes, but there were none to be seen.

Her wheelchair, though, was waiting right by her bed. An inescapable part of her life, following her everywhere.

At the far end of the room there was an opening with no door, and Ty Lee wheeled through it and out into a stone hallway, her fur blanket wrapped around her body and head like a cloak. Silence. No one around. She followed the hallway until it came to an enormous, heavy wooden door. She pushed against it; there was a heavy grinding sound, a groan of hinges, and the door scraped open.

"Hello?"

Inside was a huge, vaulted hall lit by torches set into iron brackets on the stone floor, forming halos of flickering firelight that didn't quite penetrate the shadows in the corners. There were thick supporting stone pillars every few yards, and a wide open double-door exit to the outside world. Twin rows of lit candles illuminated a path for her to take that led straight out.

Placed on the perimeter of the candle path, like sentries or guards, were the most exquisitely carved statues that Ty Lee had ever seen—and they were all, every one of them, depictions of impossibly beautiful naked women.

Slowly, creeping forward on rusted wheels, making sure that the fur of her blanket never came close to any open candle flames, Ty Lee followed the path. The first statue on her left was of a female warrior, hair cropped short, her eyes fierce, her body athletic and sleek, her hands clenched around a hunter's bow drawn taut before the eternal release of its arrow. At the base of the statue's platform was chiseled one single word: Artemis_._

The next statue was that of Aphrodite_, _whose form was constructed out of a softer, smoother loveliness. A woman frozen forever in a come-hither pose, her eyes half-lidded and her lips parted in a gentle smile, welcoming the viewer. She stood with both arms spread open, her breasts cleanly displayed with a complete lack of inhibition. It was as if she were inviting one and all to fall into her arms.

Ty Lee moved further on down the path, slowly passing by the different stone guardians of her new surroundings. Sekhmet was a ferocious, clawed huntress with the fierce head of a feral cat, ready to pounce and tear her claws into slow-moving prey. Diana was a regal queen upon a chiseled throne, her crown sparkling with diamonds. Nemesis was a wild sorceress, both arms stretched out as if casting a spell, her eyes mischievous and her smile deviant. Astarte stood by the building's exit, her stance wide, both hands placed upon the hilt of a stone sword whose tip was buried into the monastery's floor.

Outside, the statues only got stranger.

The surrounding environment was that of deep forest, with towering trees and the soft gurgling of a nearby stream. Here and there were strategically placed torches that provided more than enough illumination for Ty Lee to see by, and as she continued down the path of candlelight she noticed that there were statues randomly situated, all partially hidden from her sight.

The first thoughts that came to her mind: beautiful monsters.

Their eyes gleamed like jewels in the firelight. Upon closer inspection, Ty Lee saw that they _were_ jewels: rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds glistened their reflective rays back towards her through curious eyes. Coming around the corner of an enormous redwood, Ty Lee thought she saw another beautiful woman…until she noticed that everything south of the statue's waist had the anatomy of a muscular horse. Peering out of the nearby stream was the face and torso of another long-haired lady, but Ty Lee was certain that the stone lower half, perched in full view upon the riverbank, belonged to that of a deep sea creature. Racing alongside the riverbank, motionlessly darting between the trees and their torches, were several small, prepubescent girls, frozen in their laughter and poised as if dancing with the wild abandon that children always had. Indeed, had Ty Lee not noticed that their skin contained the patterns of leaves and vines etched into their skin, she would have had trouble differentiating them from regular children at all, instead of the mythical creatures they clearly were.

_What in any world are all these things supposed to be?_

She came upon a statue that, surprisingly, she recognized. Not that she had seen it before; everything she'd seen tonight was new to her, fresh as newly picked fruit. Instead, Ty Lee recognized the figures that had been sculpted to represent.

Formed of white marble, three young girls stood tangled in an intimate embrace, their nude forms at each point of a triangle, their faces and bodies close. Two pressed their lips together, while the third watched with a playful, mischievous glint in her stone eyes.

The one in the middle was an exact image, right down to individual hairs in her raven-winged bangs, of a preteen Azula. Her eyes were closed, her face warped into a tortured expression of sadness and betrayal even as she kissed her partner—a statue with the round face, sleek limbs, and long braided ponytail that Ty Lee could barely remember from her own childhood. The marble representation of herself held Azula's neck...while her other hand gripped the hilt of a knife that drove straight into the Fire Princess's heart. The third teenager had two long, skinny arms that wrapped around them both, ending with a tiny throwing dagger in each hand that was buried deep into their backs.

The inscription at the base of the statue's platform read: _Sisters._

Guilt panged at Ty Lee's heart, and she turned her head away. It was an old pain. One that she had _thought_ was buried deep in the sands of time. But apparently not all wounds healed so quickly.

Placed behind _Sisters_ was what at first glance looked like an enormous four-poster bed that lacked curtains, but as she wheeled closer, following the candlelit path to its end, Ty Lee discovered that it was, in fact, an intricately carved stone altar. A massive slab of black-grey stone, symbols chiseled deep upon its surface, was held up by four thick pillars that rose to six feet in the air, their tops rounded out into concave bowls that were filled with red fire. The moonlight and flickering glow from the torches made the deeply carved runes all around the altar's edge dance with shadows. The symbols were in a language that Ty Lee had never seen.

A movement across the table caught her attention. A shadow seemed to simply melt out of the black night, forming itself into slender, feminine perfection. Her skin glowed like honey in the firelight. Glittering gold sparks danced merrily within her eyes.

Ty Lee's throat went dry. It took her two swallows before she could whisper, "Azula?"

"I was under the impression," the goddess replied softly, "that I had a new name now?"

Ty Lee blinked, and then remembered, embarrassed at her lapse of memory. "Oh. Sorry. It just…well, it's kind of weird, calling you Naked Lady, don't you think?"

Azula's laugh was low and feminine and not _entirely_ mocking. "Perhaps. But it's just the two of us here, Ty Lee. What would you _like_ to call me?"

The former acrobat thought about that for a long moment. Names, titles, designations—they were very special things. To call the divine creature in front of her now 'Azula' would be akin to calling the Fire Lord 'Zuzu', or the Avatar 'Twinkletoes'—only Ty Lee still did not have much of a grasp as to the Naked Lady's range of forgiveness for good-natured ribbing.

No. Azula was a Fire Princess. The Naked Lady was…well. Beautiful. Impossibly powerful. Intelligent. Exotic. Everything that could be considered superior, it was all residing in front of her, and Ty Lee felt that it was somehow unjust to have herself, a crippled sad sack of a woman, be entrusted with providing a name to a goddess.

"My Lady," she eventually decided. A trio of syllables that meant _her._ "It's not…well, it's more of a title, really…but…" She looked up from her chair to gaze hopefully into those sparkling gold eyes. "It's what _I_ feel like I should call you. My Lady."

The Naked Lady walked clockwise around the altar, her body smooth and feline and unbelievably _relaxed_ in its control over everything. Her eyes were soft and steady, her expression solemn. Resolute. She cast one long, examining look over Ty Lee's wrecked body.

"An abundance of scars," she murmured. "Especially within. Terrible, beautiful things." She locked eyes with Ty Lee and her voice hardened, somewhat, growing deadly serious. "For me to be _your_ lady, Ty Lee, there are ancient rituals that must be honored. Rites that must be undertaken. Cleansings, and baptisms, and rebirths. And the first step is for you to tell me..."

She approached Ty Lee's chair and placed one soft, warm hand against her cheek. "Tell me what you _want_."

Now she really _was_ trembling, and it wasn't from the chill night air.

"Forgiveness," she answered. "From you, and from myself. For betraying you all those years ago. I know that you've told me that you forgive me, but—" Ty Lee had to pause, clenching her teeth as tears spilled down her cheeks, trying to organize her thoughts. "—but I just don't _feel_ it. I don't _know_ it. And I can't forgive myself for what I've done."

"That will change," the Naked Lady said. "What else? Bare yourself to me, as naked as I am to you, and I will make your dreams come true."

Ty Lee paused, and then charged ahead, wishing the impossible wish. "I want to be healed again. And young again. Like the way I used to be, back when we were together. I want to be _proud_ of my body, _confident_ about it, the way you are."

"Would you like for me to make your body ageless, as well?"

The concept of staying forever young left her momentarily speechless. "Can you…can you really do that?"

"I can. And more." She knelt low, even-level with the former acrobat. "Is there anything else you want?"

For the longest time, all Ty Lee could do was stare into those dazzling golden eyes. Eventually she caught herself, and at first all she could breathe for an answer was _"You…_"

The Lady's smile deepened.

"I want _you_," she continued. "And I want to be _yours_. Like…like marriage, but…not? It's so hard to describe this…" She shook her head, struggling to find the words as the Naked Lady waited patiently. "I know that I can't have you all to myself. I know that you want to help the world, and you've got to love the world, and the people in it, in order to do that. I'm not the jealous type. But I want to know that, as much as you love the world, you love me _most_." She looked back up at the goddess. "Is that…too much to ask, my Lady?"

In reply, the goddess wrapped her loving arms around Ty Lee's blanketed form, and drew them both together in a long, slow kiss. A soft tongue flicked against Ty Lee's lips, and she opened them to receive, desire awakening as the Naked Lady's tongue grew more insistent. Her fingers ran smoothly through Ty Lee's hair, one hand caressing the softness of her cheek, so delicate, so beautiful, so loving, and so tender.

When Ty Lee's head stopped reeling, a soft and humid voice was whispering by her left ear, "It's a _very_ good start. Well within my power."

The Naked Lady stood up, turned (offering a _very_ appreciated view of the perfect tush), and slowly walked back to the altar. "Before we begin," she said, "you will need to understand, and experience, the price that demands to be paid for such miracles."

"Name it." Ty Lee said the words without the slightest hesitation.

The grin that flashed across the Lady's face was oddly reminiscent. "You say that with a desperation that I myself once felt, a long time ago."

"Then you'll know I'll pay anything," Ty Lee breathed, her voice heavy and urgent. "What's the price?"

"Pain," the goddess answered, simply. "Purity through pain. Cleansing through punishment. Baptism through fire. Rebirth of your body and soul. Though I will not visit identical tortures upon you that were cast upon myself, I feel it is only fair to warn you…" And here the Naked Lady reached one hand upon the altar, her fingers wrapping around the hilt of a long, slender riding crop the width of her little finger and length of her forearm. She lifted it, showing it to Ty Lee. Black leather, wrapped around a flexible rod, ending with a stiff leather loop that would undoubtedly sting and burn even the toughest of hides. "My methods of _extracting_ the changing power of pain will be…straighforward."

Looking at the rod, Ty Lee felt an odd little tremor go through her core. It was the same tremor that she used to feel before going into battle, or wheeling herself down the path to June's place. Excitement. Mixed with terror.

She looked from the rod to the Lady's eyes and said, her voice nervous but steady, "There's truth in the saying, 'spare the rod and spoil the pleasure.'"

The goddess did not laugh. Her intensity focused on the wheelchair bound woman. "Make no mistake, Ty Lee. You _must_ understand this. Once you are mine, you are _mine_. You will do what I wish, submit to me, devote yourself to me. You will be mine in blood and bondage. Do you understand?"

She nodded. Swallowed. "Yes."

"I'm going to take you beyond this mundane world of limited sight, sound, and feeling, and cast you into a nether world where no culture, no society, no _rules_ of right and wrong stand between us. To make sure that you understand, I want you to observe this."

The goddess placed both palms of her hands onto either side of her smoothly naked vagina. As Ty Lee watched, mesmerized, the Naked Lady pressed her palms onto her own skin, and Ty Lee could see/sense the power that flowed through that skin…and slowly, without any magician's curtain to hide the transformation, the Naked Lady's body began to change.

The tiny glans of her clitoris drew itself out from the folds of her clitoral hood, enlarging, growing in length, transforming from a miniature pearl into a long, smooth shaft, its glans contorting up into a heavy, mushroom-shaped head. Simultaneously, the outer lips of her labia swelled with blood, dropping low, trading aside their flower-petal shape for the hard, compact purpose of testicles.

Ty Lee's eyes widened, her jaw dropping, her amazement growing as the goddess in front of her completed the transformation and wrapped one dainty little hand around the proudly erect shaft of her cock.

The Naked Lady waited patiently, smiling with amusement as she slowly worked her hand up and down the shaft's length.

"Oh. My."

It was the only words that Ty Lee could find.

The goddess responded with, "You're beginning to understand the future you've chosen."

"You—" Ty Lee blinked, and blinked, and blinked some more. Her eyes refused to look at it. She tried to talk. But the words wouldn't come out with any kind of cohesion or sense. "I heard that you could…_change_ things…but this kind of—what is this, even—you can just change this back and forth—" The stammering continued for a good several seconds more, her lips jumping back and forth between embarrassed smile and disapproving frown, her eyes widening at the impossibility of it all, until she finally said it outright: "_You've given yourself a dick?!"_

"And how do you feel about that?" the goddess asked, her voice colored by the deviant smirk on her lips.

"I don't even know where to _begin_!" Her hands shifted from her lap, to her wheels, to the sides of her face, as if unable to choose between expressions of horror or rolling closer for a better look. "I mean, how the hell am I _supposed_ to process something like this?"

"There is a place inside your mind, my love," the Naked Lady said, her voice compassionate and understanding for Ty Lee's disarray. "A place as clean and sterile as the air on top of a glacial mountaintop. Far above the world, and its peoples. Breathe in that clean, icy air, and let it go through your entire body. Let the purity course through your eyes and mind. Then observe yourself, and myself. Come to see things as they _are_, instead of what you've been taught for them to be."

As the goddess spoke, Ty Lee could feel the words become reality within her brain. From a remote, private place in her mind—one that came from individual solitude rather than forced loneliness—Ty Lee saw and identified her emotions. The fear. The shock and surprise. The revulsion of seeing an appendage so blatantly masculine upon the personification of female perfection. Perverting her.

Ty Lee opened her eyes for a second time, and turned her gaze onto the Naked Lady's cock. It was swollen, ready for her. Waiting like a serpent.

Ty Lee didn't look away. She didn't so much as avert her gaze.

She looked upon the thickened shaft, and it was perverse. And obscene. And…

Taboo.

Ty Lee lifted up one palm and cupped the heavy growth as if it were the face of a pet. Then, with a slow and gentle movement that was so ridiculously easy it surprised even herself, Ty Lee leaned forward to place a soft kiss upon the head of her mistress's organ.

Then she slid both lips over it, and suckled.

The goddess hissed with pleasure.

She gazed up and whispered, "Yes, my Lady."

"Yes to what, my love?"

"Yes, I want this. I want you. I want to pay the price, and have my new life. I want a life where there aren't any more _rules_. My Lady."

The goddess's face broke into a smile like brilliant sunbeams breaking through thunderclouds. A throaty little laugh bubbled up out of her full rose lips. It simmered with desire. Her mouth closed upon Ty Lee, and for a moment neither had any desire to speak.

It was only after their lips parted that Ty Lee realized that the goddess had lifted her out of the chair, cradling her in both arms like a bride being carried to the wedding bed. But she was not to be placed onto the altar for deflowering just yet; the goddess instead positioned Ty Lee's body to be bent over the altar's edge, her waist and torso lying face down upon the cold stone, her dead and useless legs hanging over the edge. The goddess kicked both of the paralyzed legs wide, ordering Ty Lee to arch her back as best she could to present herself for punishment.

The Naked Lady could see the pink tightness of where her buttocks met, and below that, peeping out from beneath the undercurve of her rounded bottom, the swollen love lips that would proudly wrap around the divine goddess's cock. Taking up the riding crop, she flexed it and showed it once again to Ty Lee's captive gaze. "With this tool, I will scourge your body of its guilt for betraying me."

Total silence from the waiting submissive. Even through the limited sensation of her paralyzed lower-half, Ty Lee could feel the ghostly shadow of a lingering caress from the Lady's sharp fingernails, trailing lightly over her bottom and onto her back. In her other hand, the riding crop's leather tip gave a soft touch onto the puffy lips of her outer labia. Unknown to her, the moistly welcoming slit was being teased into a throbbing arousal; one that Ty Lee knew was there but was unable to totally experience.

She waited with an urgency that was nearing frenzy.

_Crack!_

She gasped as the crop seared across the spheres of her displayed cheeks, the shock and sound perfectly equal to that of a lightning bolt. _She could FEEL it! _Another savage _crack_, and Ty Lee screamed out loud, not out of agony but blissful rejoice at the sensation. Two more strokes burned their fiery lines into her quivering bottom, and then her Lady caressed the crimson red welts with her nails, then palms, then soft lips. Kissing the pain better.

She flipped Ty Lee over onto her back and licked away a single, solitary teardrop that made its way across the acrobat's face, and then sat her upright. Ty Lee steadied herself with both palms placed upon the altar's edge by her thighs. The riding crop pushed those thighs apart, spreading her legs and exposing the glistening moistness of her aroused feminine petals. The crop slid over those petals, up across Ty Lee's navel, and lingered to circle around the puffed areola of both breasts, alternating between the two, hardening her nipples into diamond bullets.

"Beg."

Ty Lee cupped her breasts, inviting attention to them, and whined appealingly. A perfect picture of submissive supplication.

The goddess climbed onto the altar and stood, one foot on either side of the acrobat's legs, her cock swaying level with Ty Lee's face.

"Suck."

She gripped the Naked Lady's hardness with one hand and sucked, taking it deep into her throat until she was almost gagging.

"Now lie back."

She ceased her deep-throating of her Lady's shaft and laid down in supine obedience, doing everything she could to buck her pelvis upwards in open invitation, her pussy with a mind of its own, taking over her body. This was it. She was ready, ready for the penetration, ready for the ceremony as forever and ancient as beasts and birds, earth and sky, stars and moon.

The Naked Lady gestured with one hand, and from the forest floor came tendrils of living vines. They crawled over the ground, slithered up the four corners of the altar, and wrapped themselves around Ty Lee's wrists and ankles. Tying her down. Binding her tight.

"You're going to arouse me with your moans," the goddess instructed, voice humid and wet. "Begging me to make love you. And when I breach you, I'm going to fuck you. Just as I'm going to fuck you from here to the end of time. Forever."

A quiver of anticipatory pleasure shot through Ty Lee's bound and tethered body as she squirmed against her restraints. The stone altar was no longer cold to the touch—truthfully, all she could feel was a long-forgotten heat that she hadn't felt for years and years, like an old friend returning from a long journey. A delicious fever-sweat coated her skin, and she couldn't keep the terrified smile from her face.

For the first time in forever, she was having _fun_.

Spread eagled, with her nakedness exposed to the aroused gaze of her Lady, Ty Lee felt totally vulnerable, deliciously powerless, unable to resist the sacred progression of this rite. She wriggled her waist and rounded her upthrust breasts, provocative and inviting, straining against her bonds in wordless desire, begging through animal whines and pleading coos to be taken, punished, purified.

_Thwack!_

The ritual riding crop flogged down.

"Ugh!" Ty Lee grunted, throatily, as the leather cut a swathing welt across her breasts.

_Thwack!_

"Aah, _yes!_" The stinging strokes upon her exposed skin brought fresh tears to her eyes, and she bucked her pelvis involuntarily. "Fuck me now, my Lady," she hissed through gritted teeth, "fuck me now, make me your little love whore—"

_Thwack!_

Another stinging blow landed, and Ty Lee's scream rang like a bell before descending into heady, insane laughter. While her chest heaved up and down, gasping for breath, the Naked Lady placed her crop to the side and made her way to her acolyte's hips, stroking her now swollen vagina, feeling the flowing moistness of arousal as she fingered at the succulence of her throbbing clit.

"You can feel this," she stated, and began to rub. It was not a question.

"I can feel this_,"_ Ty Lee repeated, her joyous laughter mingling with happy sobbing. "_I can FEEL this!"_

The riding crop's leather tip began to slowly work its way over the fresh welts, circling around first this erect nipple, then that puffed areola, grazing across the nearest impact slice, shooting electric bursts of sensation across her brain.

Ty Lee squirmed against this new attack, pain mixed with mounting desire gripping her, causing her to whimper, pleading with her Lady to keep going, go _farther_, closing her eyes and yielding to the stinging joys of the tit-strokes. She was suddenly aware of fingers parting her pussy lips as a serpent's tongue flicked against her clit.

"_Yes yes yes yes yes YESSS…!"_

Two baby-soft lips closed upon her clit, nibbled, and sucked.

She opened her eyes and kept up her animalistic moans as she watched through a curtain of tears as the Naked Lady licked at her pussy, sipping wine from her feminine chalice. Drinking her in. Devouring her utterly.

She felt the hard tip of her lover's cock present itself at her wet opening, and the majesty of its massive girth strained against her pussy. Her portal stretched to accommodate her Lady's shaft into its tight, welcoming embrace. The Lady slid her lance out, thrust hard in, and still further in until Ty Lee's screams reached a new fever-pitch.

And then the energybending began.

In the years to come, Ty Lee would always have difficulty remembering exact details as Azula's energy coursed through her, mixed with her own, and began to do its magic. Most of all she would remember the gleaming brightness of the Naked Lady above her, cold and soft as a mountainside of fresh snow in the moonlight. There were precious few words that could aptly describe the Naked Lady as she performed miracles. Deific beauty. Savage grace.

Ty Lee could feel the rhythm of her Lady's body, her deep breathing, the increasing beat of her heart. The stone altar beneath them, and the earth that it was built upon, shook and trembled in accordance to the rhythm of her thrusts. Clouds raced away from the sky, shining the light of billions of stars and an impossibly bright moon down onto—_into_—the Naked Lady's skin.

As her breathing mounted, her power growing behind a dam of self-control, the goddess's skin glowed brighter.

It was so pure that it _burned_ Ty Lee.

The fucking was over. It wasn't lovemaking anymore. One cannot have sex with a hurricane, a volcanic eruption, a geyser of boiling steam. No one could mate with a forest fire.

Ty Lee was screaming. And weeping. She had been for a while.

Then the Naked Lady joined her screams, their voices blending together, Ty Lee's fear being paired with the Lady's vengeful, righteous fury. Her dainty hands twisted into sharp red claws and dug into Ty Lee's ribs, burning embers stabbing deep into unprotected skin. The Lady's body drew itself into a curve of pleasure as Ty Lee released her first truly pained, agonized cry, causing her golden eyes to shoot open and burn with red fire as they looked into Ty Lee's soul and she screamed

"_FOREVER"_

with absolute, brain-burning truth. The undeniable fact of the word , and its accompanying torture as the word was made law, caused Ty Lee's body to arc upright in a violent jerk until it could bend no further, and she could suddenly feel the fire of her skin igniting. Not in metaphor—she could _see_ the firelight dancing on the goddess's skin, smell the smoke, feel the flames as they crawled over flesh.

The Naked Lady was burning her alive.

Ty Lee continued to scream. She begged for mercy. She wept. Mindless panic caused her to thrash in place, but she could not escape. It would have been a kindness to kill her.

The Naked Lady was far from kind.

The divine creature only laughed. Exultant, furious, maddened laughter. Insane joy that could only be brought courtesy of a long-awaited revenge finally being realized.

The flames burned away every inch and layer of Ty Lee's skin, destroying the hair on her scalp, crisping the subcutaneous fat and muscles, burning away her lips and throat and tongue and eyes until they were nothing but ashes.

Then the ashes fell from her still-living body, and the Lady began to heal her.

Muscle regrew, ligaments reappearing with an elasticity she had forgotten. Body fat was almost nonexistent, only appearing where it was needed, instead of where time had accumulated it. Both eyes regenerated until their vision was perfectly clear, her ears sensitive to the slightest vibration in the air, her tongue soft and her vocal cords tight with the girlish tone of youth. Her skin regrew, softer than a newborn's, the lithe curves of her body's muscular system providing a voluptuously feminine and desirable teenage form. The only hair that was allowed to grow back was that of her eyebrows and the long tresses of her scalp—everything south of Ty Lee's face was left as hairless and nude as an innocent babe.

The goddess hissed in eagerness as her clawed fingers withdrew from Ty Lee's ribcage and wrapped around her waist, covering the numb section where her spine had been shattered. Ty Lee was vaguely aware that she was still crying and fighting against the invasion of her body—the physical rape of her body, courtesy of her Lady—while conscious that she had no control whatsoever of anything.

"_FOREVER"_

The Lady's fingers stabbed once again into her skin, deep into the muscles at the center of her back, and Ty Lee could suddenly feel the fire of those shards of spinal column as they collected together and fused, melting into a single mass of bone and raw nerve endings. The bony mass separated itself into vertebrae, spinal discs, and reattached nerves that shot informational overload into Ty Lee's brain.

Her legs kicked against their bonds. She could feel the harsh leathers scraping against her ankles.

All she wanted to do was run away.

She didn't want to experience the next part. She knew it was coming.

The revenge of Fire Princess Azula.

The goddess ripped her claws out from Ty Lee's back, and the newly revived teenage girl, her body supple and young and beautiful and immortal—the silver payoff of her deal with this devil—could do nothing but strain against her bonds as the Naked Lady raised both jagged hands, fingertips dripping with red blood, and painted crimson trails down from the crown of her head, over eyes closed in ecstasy, cheeks raised in a gleeful laugh, across a mouth that licked the blood slowly from her lips, the red trail of Ty Lee's blood sliding down over slender neck and perfect breasts and flat tummy until the claws reached the point where their bodies merged, cock still inside cunt.

Azula placed one bloody hand onto the crown chakra of her forehead. Made sure that she could see the look of terror on Ty Lee's face. She wanted to be able to see it

"_FOREVER"_

And then she formed her other hand into a spear, and drove her fingertips through Ty Lee's skull and into her brain…

And Ty Lee…

Ty Lee…

* * *

**This is how it feels to be Ty Lee, forever.**

**You can feel everything. Where there was once only lack of sensation, now there is an overabundance of it, and it all swirls together inside your perfect body and assaults your heart and soul until everything blurs into one solid, sharp pain. To be numb would be bliss.**

**You can run now, and do the same old flips. Your body is so strong that you can do handstands on your index fingers. Your balance is once again so impressive, so natural, that even the thinnest tightrope in the circus is as wide as the most traveled roads. And you know that you can try to lose yourself in your body, the sensation of **_**doing**_** things…**

**But part of you will forever be tied down to the sacred altar, Azula's fingertips buried deep inside your skull, the energy of her witchcraft trickling meaning into your brain as she reveals the entirety of herself, her motives, her plans, her lies. It is all shown to you. And you cannot look away.**

**She has been deceiving you since she first arrived.**

**Some of the lies were blatant, obvious. She never intended on hiding the bodies of Suki and Sokka. They sank into the ocean with the rest of Kyoshi Island. There was never supposed to be any peacemaking between herself and the Avatar, or Zuko. The only peace that would come would be through the application of precisely applied violence.**

**And you helped her do it.**

**Azula had killed every single member of Team Avatar, and you gave her precisely what she needed to do it: information. Blindly, stupidly, you were the one to go to Suki, telling her everything, causing the Kyoshi Warrior and the Water Tribesman—two of the greatest swordmasters on the map—to head straight to their deaths.**

**Then you gave Azula everything she needed to find the Avatar. **

**You can see everything as it happened, the memories transferring from the goddess and into yourself. You can feel Katara's neck as it snapped, hear the crunch of her bones and they grind together. You know what it feels like to drive your iron-strong hand into the glowing eye sockets of the Avatar. You can still see a little girl's unconscious body as you encase it into an icy coffin and toss it into the sea.**

**You know the smell of Mei's intestines as they spill across the floor.**

**You know what it is to taste a brother's blood.**

**And, finally, what burns most of all is this: you know that Azula has always wanted for you to suffer the most, because it was **_**you**_** that betrayed her worst of all. Betrayal was something that she could have expected from Mei, especially during the battle over the prison of Boiling Rock. But it was your fist that struck her energy points, your betrayal that blindsided her, your actions that taught a young Fire Princess that trust was for fools, your decision that started her down a long and slippery descent into madness.**

**It was all because of you.**

**Had you stayed loyal to Fire Princess Azula, Zuko and Sokka never would have escaped Boiling Rock. If Zuko had been locked away behind bars, instead of free to challenge his sister for the crown of the Fire Lord, then Azula would have been by her father's side while he fought the Avatar, and they would have easily killed the boy. Azula would still be able to trust you. Her sanity would remain intact, her rule would be harsh but level-minded, and the War would have ended in a victory of your home Nation.**

**Instead, you betrayed her. And now you have been sentenced to the deepest level of hell.**

**The hell of having everything you ever wanted.**

**And you cannot give it back.**

**Your body is immortal, and sexy, and under the energy yoke of the Naked Lady, who will continuously make certain that you will never die. A prison that you cannot escape.**

**The goddess lets you see her plans for you. Chief among them is torture. She will torture your perfect body, then heal it, and repeat the process until she discovers the limits of your sanity. Then she will push you over that limit, just to see how many pieces your mind can be shattered into. Finally, after it is done and over and your pain is nothing but a bore, she will rebuild you in her image.**

**Rebuild you into a monster.**

**One that worships her.**

**You cannot believe that it is possible, to love and adore one who torments you so. But the goddess trickles foreign words into your brain, words like **_**Stockholm Syndrome**_** and **_**Cult Indoctrination**_**, and she whispers these words to you with a promise and certainty that freezes your blood into ice. It is possible, and she knows how.**

**You are forever trapped here. Forever trapped with her.**

**All hers.**

**Only hers.**

**All you have left is a trickster who has fooled you, a goddess who has enslaved you, and as the Lady laughs and screams in exultation at her final victorious revenge, you can taste the divine irony of your eternal hell. Because when you could have been thinking about the safety of others, when you could have been contemplating the various dangers that Azula could pose to everyone, when you could have been helping others, healing others, caring for others, thinking about others…**

**You were only thinking about Azula.**

**Now Azula is all you will ever have.**

**And her revenge on you will be never-ending and forever. Everlasting. Amen.**

**This is the end of your life.**

**This is eternal despair.**

**This is how it feels to be Ty Lee.**

**Forever.**

**888**

Darkness has fallen upon the world of man, and the night has neither stars nor moon to illuminate hope. Only thunderclouds.

People across every nation find themselves suddenly and inexplicably cast adrift in the newness of a world that _knows_ the Avatar is gone. Those in positions of authority feel very real doubts and fears threatening to overtake them, influence their decisions, switch their mindsets away from assisting others and instead to self-preservation.

Throughout the Earth Kingdom, martial law is shortly declared after dozens of revolutions in twelve different cities start up. It is a strange and ironic coincidence that criminal organizations and governments both scramble to fill power vacuums up as quickly as possible. After the death of many prominent figures on Kyoshi Island and the Zephyr Sea, and the accompanying deaths in the days and months afterward as authority figures scrambled to fill the power vacuum, most of the Earth Kingdom will eventually descend into a civil war zone.

The Fire Nation will be worse.

But even in the darkness of night, there are some who bring candles. An occasional firefly may provide a soft comforting glow. Even thunderstorms have their bright flashes of light.

In the Earth Kingdom, a black stone bracelet is washed ashore, catching the eye of a travelling cabbage merchant.

In the South Pole, amongst the newly repopulated Southern Water Tribe, a little girl is born and given the name of Korra.

High atop the Eastern Air Temple, an inventor's son wheels his way into his father's workshop, joining an emergency meeting of the Order of the White Lotus.

And in the Fire Nation, amongst the rubble of a destroyed palace, a bloodstained broadsword is found buried underneath rocks and debris.

There is no body.


End file.
